WHILE it’s still early in the season on the LPGA Tour, Australia’s highest-ranked golfer Hannah Green has all but given up her dream of becoming the world’s No 1 player. For this year, anyway.
“Realistically, with Nelly (Korda) winning as many times as she did last year, I don’t think I can achieve No 1 unless I win the same amount of times,” she said. “But I would love to get to world No 2, or World No 3.”
That’s certainly not out of the question for Australia’s best performed female golfer in recent years.
A two-time winner of the Greg Norman Medal, presented to Australia’s golfer of the year, Green won three times on the LPGA Tour in 2024 – a feat equalled only by Korda, Lydia Ko and China’s Ruoning ‘Ronnie’ Yin – and finished the year ranked world No 6.
She made 16 cuts in 20 starts, with six top 10 finishes as well as her three wins – at the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore, at the JM Eagle LA Championship and at the BMW Ladies Championship, earning more than $2 million in prize money.
“It’s hard to back up a successful year,” she said. “Most players have goals throughout the year and, you know, because I did win those three tournaments, it’s hard to then reset.”
Not that Green hasn’t begun the year in style.
The winner of the HSBC Women’s World Championship in 2024, Hannah Green wasn’t able to defend her title in early March, however she has set lofty goals for the rest of 2025.
She finished fourth in the Founders Cup at Florida in early February and, after a fortnight’s break at home in Perth, travelled to Singapore to defend her title as the HSBC Women’s World Champion at Sentosa golf course, finishing a creditable seventh.
Like all the top players, Green seeks to be at her peak for the season’s five major championships, which kick off with the Chevron Championship in Texas at the end of April.
“Unfortunately I didn’t play a lot of weekends in the majors last year,” she said. “I put too much pressure on myself to perform well at those events.
“I’m hoping this year will be a better season in that sense. Yeah, just got to use the confidence from the last couple years to go into those weeks.”
Green is also hoping to overcome an unwelcome tendency to get off to slow starts in some tournaments – though she does her best to put an upbeat spin on it.
“Sometimes when you’re in the lead the entire week, it’s a little bit more mentally challenging compared to when you have had a not-so-good first day,” she said
“Fortunately I did have some good results after poor first rounds, but this is a complete different season, so who knows what it might be like this year?
“I’m hoping at least, yeah, to get off to better starts and just be a little bit more consistent throughout the week. Things don’t always go the way you want, and that’s just what you have to mentally think about out there.”
During her February break at home, Green spent a lot of time with her coach, Ritchie Smith, who was recently named Western Australia’s top coach – of any sport.
“I’ve been working with him since I was probably 12 or 13 years old,” she said. “We’ve had a long relationship, and you know, he knows — I guess he can be very personable about how to apply things in the golf swing.
“Minjee Lee also works with him. Even though we might be working on the same thing in a sense, it’s just the way that he delivers it to both of us that makes it easier to understand.
“It might be completely different, terminology, but he understands because we’ve had such a long relationship, what maybe clicks for me and what perhaps clicks for other players.
“It’s just nice to have grown up with the same coach and he can see how I’ve grown as a player, and also, I guess, as a person.
“Just having someone that I trust that even if things aren’t going well, he’ll tell me the swing is bad. He won’t just tell me things are going well.
“I want him to be honest. I think having that relationship both sides, even me telling him, I don’t think that’s right and vice versa, I think that’s important.”
