What a moving win it was for the 29 year-old Hannah Green in the HSBC Women’s Open Championship on The Tanjong course at Sentosa as she won by a shot from America’s Auston Kim. Hannah won the event in 2024, only this time it was rather more special as she had her husband, Jarryd Felton, on the bag. She suggested that it was up there with their ‘23 wedding day — a wedding day which followed 11 years of dating.
Friends poured champagne over the pair and there was one more beaming, bearded hug from her Australian PGA tour-playing husband who has probably caddied for his wife on no more than three occasions.
He recognised that she had been nervous at the start but was confident that she had everything it takes to deal with the situation: “She’s cool, she’s calm and she’s collected. It was wonderful to watch her going about her craft.”
To him and many another, her holes of the day came at the par-five 8th, where a stunner of a five wood paved the way for an eagle, and the 15th. When all three of Hannah, Minjee Lee and Angel Yin missed the green at this par three, Hannah outshone the others by holing out from the green’s apron. At that point, she went back to four clear.
It was at the fourteenth that she had had her first bogey when she followed Yin into the trees and failed to get up and down from off the green after her ball darted in and out of the hole.
There was an identical in-and-out putt at the 17th which left her only two shots ahead of Auston Kim and, though she would have loved to sign off with a birdie, she three-putted to finish just one ahead of an American whose golf had shown nothing but promise.
There was a generous winner’s speech from Jeeno Thitikull at the previous week’s Honda, and there was another from Hannah. She may have been irritated by her putting at the last, but still she spoke of how the course was “in such good shape that you could have putted on the tee-boxes.”
She is hoping this season will be back to how it was in ’24 when she finished fifth in the world rankings before falling to 20th in ’25. “I might have to change some of my goals,” she said of her ’26 schedule. Jarryd had mentioned the Australian Open and the chances are that they will be a double-act that week.
The long-hitting Auston Kim spilled a mixed bag of thoughts after her second place. “I hit some bad shots and I didn’t have my A game but I was still able to pull off a result like this and play some solid golf. Overall, I’m proud of myself…I’ve still got a lot to learn, whether it’s golf related or human related. I feel like every day is an opportunity to learn how to become a better golf and a better human.”
How proud Karrie Webb, the winner here in 2011, would have been of Hannah, who already has one major under her belt, and Minjee Lee, who has three, to whom she had handed out Karrie Webb scholarships in their amateur days. The scholarships were each worth $15,000 and it was when she watched Hannah playing in the second round of the stroke-play qualifier for the 2015 US Amateur Championship at the Portland G C that she followed her for a first time. Her comments were as follows: “She’s very technically sound….She didn’t miss a green when I watched.”
And she barely missed a green at Sentosa in a performance to suggest that more majors await.
