02 Dec 2020 | Professional golf |
Oh looks to close 2020 in style
by Martin Blake
A lot’s at stake for the world’s best female players over the next three weeks but of the Australians, it’s particularly the case for Victorian Su Oh.
The 24-year-old Oh is still ranked 87th in the world and has been one of the better players on tour for a few years now, but she has had a difficult season.
She is trying to play herself in the LPGA Tour Championship in Florida just before Christmas, an event worth $US5 million in which she finished sixth last year and 48th the previous year.
But as it stands, Melburnian Oh is not in the field. She needs to be inside the top 60 on the points rankings, and right now, she’s 89th.
She has this week’s Volunteers of America Classic just outside Dallas and next week’s US Women’s Open at Champions Golf Club, also in Texas, to turn it around quickly.
Oh finished inside the top 10 at the ISPS Handa Vic Open in February but then the Covid-19 interruption came, and when they returned to tournament play, she put new shafts in her irons and promptly missed eight consecutive cuts. She has earned only $US57,000 for the year.
Minjee Lee (ranked 7th), Hannah Green (44) and Katherine Kirk (40) will all be there at Tiburon Golf Club in Florida from 17 December.
The season finishes so late (20 December) that both Green and Oh told Inside The Ropes a couple of weeks ago that they would spend their Christmases in quarantine hotels. That’s because they want to get home to Perth and Melbourne to see family.
Most of the top Aussies headed by world No. 8 Lee are in the field in Texas this week.
Six Australians are in the field for the US Women’s Open -- Lee, Oh, Green, Kirk, Sarah Jane Smith and amateur Gabi Ruffels.
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