Golf, at times, has a habit of making its champions wait. Shiho Kuwaki spent nearly half an hour doing just that on Sunday at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. The 23-year-old sat through nerves, adrenaline, and uncertainty before she even knew if she’d have another hole to play. As she got the answer, she made it count by turning her second appearance at a championship into a dramatic first win. Naturally, post-winning, she could only offer three words.

“I just can’t believe it,” Kuwaki said at the post-round press conference.
“I just can’t believe it. Well, just to be on a stage like this is just an honor, and every hole, I just focused shot by shot and just tried to enjoy it out there as much as I could.”

The Japanese got her name engraved on the ornate silver flute cup for winning the 50th edition after winning the second hole in the playoff against Esther Henseleit. The buildup to the moment was nothing but tense.

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Kuwaki had trailed by as many as five shots at one stage of the final round, before playing her way back into the lead only to watch Esther Henseleit force extra holes with a 40-foot birdie putt on the 72nd green, as Charley Hull and Lottie Woad also fell short of the lead on the final day.

The collapse that opened the door belonged to Yealimi Noh, who carried a three-shot cushion into Sunday, then bogeyed three of her first four holes, and lost her share of the lead for good with another dropped shot at the 14th. That left Kuwaki and Henseleit to settle it at the par-four 18th, twice.

On the first extra hole, Kuwaki got up and down from a bunker to save par after Henseleit missed a 15-foot birdie for the win. On the second, Henseleit’s tee shot struck a marshal’s ankle before finishing in a gorse bush, and the resulting bogey handed Kuwaki the title once she two-putted for par.

It is Kuwaki’s maiden major title and only her second appearance at the Championship, making her the fourth Japanese golfer to win the AIG Women’s Open, following Ayaka Okamoto in 1984, Hinako Shibuno in 2019 and Miyu Yamashita last year. That makes it back-to-back years with a Japanese champion and the fifth Japanese player in the last three years to win a major, with this year’s purse also rising to a record $10 million.