If she hadn’t already carried out so, younger gun Steph Kyriacou has formally introduced her arrival as a world {golfing} drive after securing an LPGA Tour card for 2022.
Key factors:
- Australian golfer Steph Kyriacou has risen from world quantity 806 to 75 within the area of twenty-two months.
- The 21-year-old is now the third-highest ranked Australian girls behind Minjee Lee and Hannah Inexperienced.
- Veteran Sarah Jane Smith has additionally certified for the LPGA Tour after taking a 12 months’s maternity go away.
The Sydney sensation joined fellow Australians Sarah Jane Smith and Karis Davidson in efficiently incomes full rights to the celebrated and profitable tour via the gruelling eight-round LPGA Q-Sequence.
Kyriacou held her nerve with a final-round 71 on the Highlands Oaks Course in Alabama to complete tied for sixteenth at 11 below and effectively inside the highest 45 to qualify.
Kyriacou’s commencement added the exclamation mark to a different unimaginable season barely a 12 months after turning skilled.
The just-turned-21-year-old has risen from world quantity 806 to seventy fifth within the rankings in a whirlwind 22 months that started together with her spectacular eight-stroke victory as a teenage beginner on the 2020 LET Australian Women’ Traditional in Bonville.
Opting to show skilled after the life-changing win, Kyriacou defied all odds through the international pandemic to guide the Ladies’s British Open early in her main championship debut at Royal Troon final 12 months.
Together with her father carrying her bag, Kyriacou was topped the 2020 European rookie of the 12 months earlier than including a second LET title to her CV on the Dutch Women’ Open in July.
Kyriacou recorded 12 top-10 finishes for the 12 months in all to contend for the full-blown European participant of the 12 months gong all the best way till this season’s remaining occasion within the Center East.
Now Kyriacou finds herself Australia’s quantity three-ranked feminine star behind solely main winners Minjee Lee and Hannah Inexperienced, who’ll she be part of on subsequent 12 months’s LPGA Tour.
For all her successes, although, Kyriacou credit her fortuitous victory at Bonville final February because the turning level in her profession.
It was solely a month later that the sporting world shut down for a number of months due to COVID-19.
“I used to be form of fortunate that I gained this match as an beginner. I performed effectively, however the timing was good as a result of certainly one of my finest mates, Grace Kim, she’s clearly a high beginner, however she did not win, needed to come to Q-College this 12 months. She hardly performed final 12 months,” Kyriacou stated.
“So I believe I have been very fortunate in a way. It is at all times grateful, but it surely’s nonetheless been a curler coaster.”
Because it has been for Smith, too.
The tour veteran, however new mum, clinched her card by a thread after a final-round 76 left the 37-year-old tied for forty first, in a bunch that included Davidson, at 4 below.
Smith has been a mainstay of the LPGA Tour for a decade however needed to qualify once more after taking a 12 months’s maternity go away.
Davidson additionally certified by a solitary shot after a horror final-round 77 that nearly shattered her massive American dream.
AAP