On Sunday 25, Australia’s Kelsey Bennett blitzed her way through the match-play finals to be crowned the 2024 Athena champion.
The Athena is a 12 player tournament which begins on Saturday afternoon with ‘The Combine’, a series of nine challenges for the elite players involved, with points allocated and only eight of the 12 players graduating to Sunday’s matchplay phase.
Sunday’s matchplay is head-to-head over four holes at Sandy Links with the winners progressing ultimately to a two-player final to decide the winner of this year’s Athena.
The tournament is now a joint venture between the WPGA Tour of Australasia, the PGA of Australia, Golf Australia and Evolve Sports Group who developed and delivered the first two years of the concept, highlighting the continued collaboration between the peak bodies of golf.
Bennett, who celebrated her birthday only weeks ago, played consistently in Saturday’s Combine skills challenges, plotting her way around without any stand-out shots, before a clinical Sunday performance.
“I just thought I’d aim for the win yesterday, and worse case I’d finish where I was,” she said.
“I didn’t end up using the mulligan because I was playing steady enough that I just couldn’t really choose a time to play it.”
Today the woman from New South Wales revealed she was saving her best game for the Sunday matches, going -1, -1 and Even in her three four-hole matches.
“I just felt like I knew exactly where the ball was going to go the whole time, so yeah, it’s a good feeling,” Bennett said, drenched in champagne.
Bennett faced the in-form Jess Whitting in her first match of the day, and looked to have the win secured before a long par-saving Whitting putt on the last.
Forced to make a tester now for par herself to tie and force a putt-off, Bennett stepped up and poured it in, and again in the putt-off while Whitting missed. One down.
Her second match proved to be a little easier, with Sarah Yamaki Branch – who knocked out day one leader Cassie Porter – struggling off the tee against Bennett. Two down.
Amy Chu, who defeated Steph Bunque in an extended putt-off and Elmay Viking in rounds one and two, stood between Bennett and the trophy.
An eagle-par-par start for Bennett, to Chu’s birdie-bogey-bogey afforded Bennett a three shot buffer heading down the last.
Finding the fairway bunker off the tee, then the back greenside bunker, Bennett’s buffer began to shrink.
The shrinking continued on the putting surface with a couple of missed putts, but the scoring and hard work over the first three holes allowed for that, Bennett finally tapped in to make The Athena trophy hers.
Bennett heads to the Singapore Women’s Open next week, before the Women’s NSW Open and the Australian Women’s Classic, where another win could prove life-changing.
The Athena is Bennett’s biggest win, adding to her WPGA Tour of Australasia Qualifying School win last year.
