AIG Girls’s Open at St Andrews: Nelly Korda, Lilia Vu, Charley Hull, Solheim Cup race and extra | Golf Information

Who will impress on the AIG Girls’s Open this week, stay on Sky Sports activities? 5 key storylines to observe from the Outdated Course at St Andrews, together with Nelly Korda, Charley Hull and an enormous week in Solheim Cup qualification…

What can we anticipate from ‘celebrity’ Korda?

Nelly Korda arrives in Scotland because the world No 1 after her dominant begin to 2024, though the American has struggled to hit the heights that noticed her win six occasions in seven begins on the LPGA Tour earlier within the season.

Korda was an nearly unstoppable drive for a three-month stretch, the place she added to her main tally on the Chevron Championship and have become the primary participant since Annika Sorenstam in 2005 to win 5 consecutive LPGA Tour occasions.

A dramatic dip in type noticed her make early exits from each the subsequent two majors as part of a run of three consecutive missed cuts, with that streak solely ending with a tied-Twenty sixth on the Evian Championship final month.

“What’s been happening to me is I make a mistake and then I make another mistake on top of it,” Korda stated after her tied-Twenty second end in her final begin on the Paris Olympics.

May the AIG Girls’s Open – the place she has 4 top-14 finishes within the final 5 years – present a change in fortune?

Can Vu create extra main historical past?

It was barely 4 years in the past that Lilia Vu was exterior the highest 1,000 and contemplating quitting skilled golf. Now, the American is sitting second on the planet rankings and trying to be part of an elite group by profitable the identical main in successive seasons.

Vu received the AIG Girls’s Open in commanding trend at Walton Heath final 12 months, ending six away from dwelling favorite Charley Hull to earn a second main title of an excellent 2023, with the 26-year-old persevering with to impress this marketing campaign regardless of a prolonged spell out with a again damage.

She made a profitable return to motion on the Meijer LPGA Traditional in June earlier than ending runner-up on the KPMG Girls’s PGA Championship per week later, though has completed no larger than twelfth in her 4 LPGA Tour begins since.

A profitable main title defence within the ladies’s sport is much more unusual than in males’s golf, with Yani Tseng’s back-to-back Girls’s Open successes in 2010 and 2011 the final time it occurred. Will Vu finish that run this week on the Dwelling of Golf?

Will Coughlin proceed ‘unbelievable’ run?

Lauren Coughlin could have been an unfamiliar title to some within the sport when she began the 12 months with out an LPGA Tour title and never on the planet’s high 100, however the American heads into the ultimate main of the 12 months as the shape participant within the ladies’s sport.

Coughlin produced her greatest main end by taking a share of third on the Chevron Championship in April, then claimed fourth on the Evian Championship after squandering a two-shot lead throughout the closing spherical in France.

The 31-year-old has bounced again from that final-day disappointment by profitable claiming her first two LPGA Tour titles over the previous month, securing a breakthrough win on the CPKC Girls’s Open and including one other final week on the ISPS Handa Girls’s Scottish Open.

Coughlin has a Solheim Cup debut locked in and is on the perimeter of the world’s high 10 after a run that she herself described as “pretty crazy”. A maiden main title can be her third win in 4 begins and cap off a memorable summer season in type.

May this be Hull’s time for a British main victory?

Hull left the AIG Girls’s Open final 12 months “determined” to win a serious in 2024, having didn’t convert a 54-hole co-lead on dwelling soil, with the Englishwoman coming into this week’s occasion off the again of her greatest efficiency of the season on the LPGA Tour.

A fifth-place end on the Scottish Open on Sunday was described by Hull as “good momentum” heading to St Andrews, following on from two runner-up finishes on the Women European Tour earlier within the 12 months, however she stays and not using a worldwide win since October 2022.

Hull has needed to cope with critics on social media about her failure to win extra steadily, alongside together with her going viral on-line over movies smoking on the golf course – one thing she says helps her calm down – throughout the US Girls’s Open earlier this summer season.

She admitted final week that enjoying hyperlinks golf “was not the best part” of her sport, though this occasion is an opportunity to deal with a method she is studying to “embrace”. There hasn’t been a British ladies’s main winner since Georgia Corridor on this occasion in 2018, however Hull would love to alter that.

Which gamers will safe their Solheim Cup spots?

The ultimate ladies’s main of the 12 months has added significance for these trying to function in subsequent month’s Solheim Cup, stay on Sky Sports activities, as it’s the final occasion within the race to qualify for each Group Europe and Group USA.

Solheim Cups being held in successive years is more likely to depart each groups wanting fairly much like those that went head-to-head for final September’s dramatic attract Spain, though there will probably be loads of gamers trying to make a late qualification push.

Corridor and Anna Nordqvist are two Solheim Cup regulars for Group Europe that each require a captain’s choose as issues stand, which they’d each possible get in the event that they fail to qualify robotically, whereas Germany’s Esther Henseleit is on the verge of a Group Europe debut after successive runner-up finishes.

Suzann Pettersen will title her 4 captain’s picks to finish her line-up on Monday afternoon, with Group USA captain Stacy Lewis additionally asserting her 4 picks within the days main as much as the event.

A win or sturdy efficiency from one in all their potential shortlists might make these selections even more durable.

Watch the AIG Girls’s Open this week stay on Sky Sports activities. The preview present is stay on Wednesday from 4pm on Sky Sports activities Golf, whereas protection of the opening spherical begins on Thursday at noon.

Sky Sports activities+ which has formally launched and will probably be built-in into Sky TV, streaming service NOW and the Sky Sports activities app, giving Sky Sports activities prospects entry to over 50 per cent extra stay sport this 12 months at no further price. Discover out extra right here.