{"id":28160,"date":"2025-07-28T07:13:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/28160\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T07:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:13:14","slug":"gareth-bale-aig-womens-open-in-porthcawl-a-massive-step-for-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/28160\/","title":{"rendered":"Gareth Bale: AIG Women’s Open in Porthcawl a ‘massive step’ for Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lydia Ko is the reigning Women’s Open champion having seen off America’s Lilia Vu – the victor in 2023 – to win at St Andrews<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

The New Zealander will be among the favourites this week, alongside a number of other contenders such as world number one Nelly Korda, from the USA, and Thailand’s Jeeno Thitikul.<\/p>\n

Charley Hull and rising star Lottie Woad, for whom the Women’s Open will be just a second event as a professional, are among those hoping to lead the charge for a first British winner since Georgia Hall’s victory at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 2018.<\/p>\n

Ladies European Tour rookie Darcey Harry, a Royal Porthcawl member, will fly the flag for Wales as the 22-year-old plays just the second major of her young career.<\/p>\n

Australia’s Grace Kim will aim for a second successive major victory having triumphed at the Evian Championship earlier in July, with fellow Australian Minjee Lee, Sweden’s Maja Stark and Mao Sigao, of Japan, also looking for a second major success this year.<\/p>\n

“All those top players are going to be here and I think everyone in Wales will want to come out and witness some greatness,” Bale says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lydia Ko is the reigning Women’s Open champion having seen off America’s Lilia Vu – the victor in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-28160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}