Australian Open: Seventh-best Japanese player beats world No 1

Players dump drinks on the head of Japan’s Haru Nomura after her Australian Open win in Adelaide yesterday.

What to make of this? A 23-year-old woman with a mostly short and undistinguished career held off the world’s little genius and world No 1 player Lydia Ko to win the Australian Open. And in the process she brushed aside Hall of Fame golfer Karrie Webb.

Haru Nomura is considered only the seventh-best Japanese player by those who compute world rankings. Time will tell whether the 2016 Australian Open at the Grange Golf Club has delivered a champion to influence world golf or produced a story sadly and frustratingly never rightfully fulfilled. Mike Weir and the Masters ring a bell.

You must judge what you see. Nomura began with 67 first round, five-under-par. Then followed a 68, 70 and a final round of 67. Her total for four rounds was 17-under, four better than Ko and eight better than Webb.

There were two elements obvious yesterday that suggest she is not a one-tournament champ. She was more composed than a cat in front of a fire. Everything about her game purred. She knew the freakish Ko would come at her. She would know Webb would give until she could give no more or her putter lost its blinkers. But take a microscope to her game and you will not find faults, any lethal faults anyway.

And she was not feeling the heat. “There was no pressure,” she said. “Golf is the fight of my own. It’s not against someone else, even though someone else plays well. If I hit my goals, then I win.”

Have a look at her stats. She hit fairways with a whack of her driver, she found the pin with precision. She made an error on the last but that was nerves. She dumped a short iron into a greenside pot and couldn’t get down in two.

The first bogey at the last hole. It sits lonely against the eight birdies. Nomura’s long game allowed her to squeeze the par-fives to pitch-and-putts. She was 10 under the par-fives for the tournament.

Ko looked the likely champion for most of the four days. She set about winning the Open as precisely and nervelessly as a wealthy businessman might annex a company that tickled his fancy and was there for the taking.

First, she cased the joint and found the Grange course to her liking.

“The greens are pretty firm and there’s bunkers in the most perfect places,” she said. “You need to position it well off the tee.”

The shorter iron into the greens gave players more chance, killing the ball on the putting surface. She already had her game plan calculated.

She put a two-birdie deposit on the Patricia Bridges Bowl after a careful 70 in the first round. Next day a down payment of two more birdies and she sat four under halfway through the tournament. On Saturday she was a little more demonstrative, slapping four consecutive birdies on the banker’s bench. She was suddenly eight under and one off the overnight lead shared by Danielle Kang, Jenny Shin and Nomura.

Immediately yesterday Ko made her definitive bid, with birdies on the first two holes, courtesy of crisp irons that bit and held their ground followed by two perfectly stroked putts. Ko was 10 under par and in the lead.

Webb would join her almost immediately — birdies at one and four, the second came after her short putt peeped in and then finally plopped down. Ko’s business deal was now a bidding war between the very young and an oldie but a goodie. No one had factored in Nomura but she had three birdies in the first nine.

There was a compelling air of arrogance about Webb and Ko. After they struck their shots they watched dispassionately. It gave the daunting impression that each had played the ball with technical perfection and factored in the slightest wind change. They only awaited to see what role happenstance would play.

Webb would lead the tournament for the first time when she birdied the relatively simple par-five fifth. Ko, in the group behind, did exactly the same and our leaders were together again, this time at 11 under.

And just as the battle of the ages was shaping as one for the ages, Nomura birdied her way into the joint lead. The dynamics of the afternoon changed profoundly after Nomura birdied the fifth and sixth holes to make it three at the top. Then at the ninth, a par-four playing as the sixth-most difficult hole on the day, the storyline changed altogether.

A poor second shot from Nomura left her a putt of some 15m. Hard enough but the shot into the green came to rest on a slope on the green where it ran into a pot. She carefully set the ball curling to the cup. And it dropped. Nomura had the lead with the much tougher back nine to go. Gulp.

Nomura was a rookie on the LPGA tour in 2011. She had never finished better than fourth though she had two good finishes in the LPGA’s opening tournaments this year. In both events she was tied for 13th.

She was now in head-to-head confrontation with the world No 1, the kid Ko, who had already won a major championship, the Evian last year, one of 10 victories on the US tour.

In the first three rounds, Nomura played the final four holes in one over par; Ko even par. This would be, then, the stretch that would decide the Open winner, a title won last year by Ko at Royal Melbourne and five times by Webb.

Nomura birdied the par-five 15th. So did Ko. Still two shots difference. Ko birdied 16 to go to 14 under and was once more one shot off the cool Nomura, who had not lost rhythm under the pressure of not only leading but at times increasing the gap at the top. Nomura swings at the ball harder than David Warner but she never found herself out of synch or off balance.

It was never better displayed than on the par-four 16th, playing as the ninth-hardest hole on the course. A long drive, a second that bit the green at the front and released gently like a bowling bowl languidly rolling down the green. The short putt gave her another birdie, moved her to 16 under for the tournament, a two-shot lead.

Webb’s putting fell apart. By the end she could not sink a rubber ducky.

Ko has had it reconfirmed that if she is not at her best the No 67 player in the world can outplay her and out-think her. Wallop her. Maybe the secret was Nomura’s putting. “Putter…wow…unbelievable” was how she described it. She should not worry about her English. Twenty-six putts speak for themselves.

Patrick Smith travelled to Adelaide courtesy of Golf Australia