Hannah Green is within touching distance of ending a 12-year local title drought at the Women’s Australian Open.<\/p>\n
Green is outright leader at nine under after producing a stellar third round on Saturday at Adelaide’s Kooyonga Golf Club.<\/p>\n
The world No.9 fired a four-under 68 and holds a one-stroke buffer from Argentina’s Magdalena Simmermacher (eight under).<\/p>\n
The duo are set for a Sunday showdown – the next-best in the chasing pack are South African Casandra Alexander and Agathe Laisne from France at five under.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Karis Davidson and Kirsten Rudgeley are four under, but the hopes of the locals producing a first winner at the Open since Karrie Webb in 2014 rest squarely with Green.<\/p>\n
The West Australian carded six birdies and two bogeys on Saturday and, while revelling in the home hype from large galleries, said keeping calm would be vital on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“Just making sure that I’m not getting too ahead of myself,” Green said.<\/p>\n
“I’m probably going to put too much pressure on myself tomorrow and expect everything to go close and go in.<\/p>\n
“And sometimes that’s just not what the case is.<\/p>\n
“I have just got to stay focused on what I can do – and I know there was a couple of good rounds from people playing a little bit earlier today.<\/p>\n
“So (I’m) just focusing on what I’m doing and controlling what I can.”<\/p>\n
Should Green triumph, she will become the fourth local winner of the Open, joining five-time champ Webb, Jan Crafter and Jan Stephenson.<\/p>\n
“Tomorrow morning, depending on tee times, I might have to distract myself a little bit – maybe go out for breakfast,” Green said.<\/p>\n
“But I’m super excited.<\/p>\n
“I really hope more people come out and that the crowds will get bigger.<\/p>\n
“It looks like it’s going to be a little warmer, hopefully that means the course firms up because there was a couple of times where I thought it was going to bounce a bit bigger, but it didn’t.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully not too much wind (tomorrow) because it got pretty gusty those last few holes.<\/p>\n
“I hit a lot of good wedge shots over the last two days and it’s being able to capitalise on those shots, because there’s a lot of times where you don’t have easy shots in.<\/p>\n
“And the putter has also been kind to me, so hopefully I can have all that tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Steph Bunque (two under) and Kelsey Bennett (one under) are the only other Australians in red figures.<\/p>\n
Australia’s triple major winner and world No.4 Minjee Lee (four over) slipped from contention, shooting a troubled five-over 77 on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Compatriot and fellow major winner Grace Kim is two over after signing for a one-under 71.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hannah Green is within touching distance of ending a 12-year local title drought at the Women’s Australian Open.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-539688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}