As the AIG Women’s Open returns to Royal Lytham & St Annes this summer, we look back at the Championship’s most memorable home triumph — Georgia Hall’s maiden major win on the Lancashire links in 2018.
Royal Lytham & St Annes has hosted five Women’s Opens, but for British fans there’s one that stands above the rest: Georgia Hall’s maiden major victory in August 2018.
Hall, then 22, shot a final-round 67 to win by two strokes over runner-up Pornanong Phatlum, the 54-hole leader — her first title on either the LPGA or Ladies European Tour, and the first English winner of the championship in 14 years. She’d trailed Phatlum overnight, but held her composure through the closing stretch to complete a maiden major victory in front of large home crowds.
Third British Winner
The turning point came late. Hall joined Phatlum at the top of the leaderboard after the 13th, then holed a 20ft putt on the 16th to take the lead for the first time. A three-shot cushion arrived at the last after Phatlum’s costly double bogey at the 17th, and Hall closed things out with her only bogey of the day at the 18th — the finishing hole beneath Lytham’s famous red-brick clubhouse.
It made Hall only the third British winner since the event became a major championship in 2001, following Karen Stupples and Catriona Matthew, also winning at Lytham in 2009, and she was appointed MBE the following year in recognition of the win.
Eight years on, as the AIG Women’s Open returns to Lytham, Hall’s win remains the benchmark home success story for the Championship at this course — and a reminder of just how loud Lytham can get when a home player is in contention.
Read more: Dame Laura Davies reflects on 50 years of the Women’s Open
