The fifth version of the bold ladies’s golf occasion The Athena tees off this weekend as a brand new rising star of Australian golf seems to hitch its spectacular honour roll.
Watch The Athena LIVE with Fox Sports activities, accessible on Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your first month for simply $1. Restricted time provide.
LPGA gamers Grace Kim, Steph Kyraciou, Cassie Porter and Karis Davidson in addition to the Women European Tour’s Kelsey Bennett and Kirsten Rudgeley all took half in The Athena throughout the youth of their skilled careers in Australia.
Now, will probably be flip of the subsequent up-and-comer in Australian ladies’s golf’s spectacular pipeline to showcase themselves to the Australian public.
That’s what the occasion is all about.
The Athena is designed to do issues in another way and supply Australia’s rising feminine golf expertise with a platform to point out off their gorgeous abilities and personalities in a made for tv match.
The idea is fully authentic with the occasion staged over two days with the primary day filled with skills-based challenges, earlier than four-hole match play contests determined the champion on day two.
There’s music enjoying, the gang is inspired to be loud, and golf’s conventional gown code is forgotten because the gamers categorical themselves by way of their apparel and plenty of different methods, together with dancing on the tee field.
Peninsula-Kingswood Golf Membership in Melbourne’s south-east is enjoying host this yr and can welcome 12 of Australia’s greatest feminine golfers.
– When is The Athena on and the way do I watch? –
The Athena can be broadcast reside and completely on Fox Sports activities and Kayo from 2pm to 6pm AEDT on Saturday 1 March and Sunday 2 March.
– What’s the format? –
The opening day’s line up consists of 9 completely different abilities challenges the place the golfers accumulate factors, and so they wish to be within the high eight at day’s finish to ebook their place within the match play rounds.
They may face a 100m pitch shot, a flop shot, hassle shot, bunker shot, thriller shot (the place a random membership is chosen from a sure distance), lengthy putt, lengthy drive, optimum (straightest) drive and nearest to the pin to check their abilities.
The challenges at all times showcase the unbelievable expertise that sits inside Australian ladies’s golf with highlights a lots rising from the opening day’s motion.
The second day will look a little bit extra like conventional golf, however nonetheless completely different, with four-hole match play contests going down.
The highest eight will meet in quarter-finals earlier than the sector is dwindled right down to semi-finals after which a remaining.
Any matches which are degree after 4 holes can be determined shortly with a putt off used because the tie-breaker with gamers shifting additional away from the opening till somebody misses and is eradicated.
– Who ought to we glance out for? –
The Athena is a really uncommon occasion in that champions don’t get requested again.
So, Kelsey Bennett won’t defend her crown.
As a substitute, they clear the best way for the subsequent wave of proficient Australian feminine golfers to take pleasure in a second within the highlight.
Sarah Yamaki Department is at all times one to look at at The Athena as her bubbly character shines.
The Queenslander sings and dances to the music in between pictures and places on a present with a golf membership in hand – she made a hole-in-one on the Gamers Sequence Murray River occasion earlier this yr, the place the women and men compete towards each other.
Rookie skilled Abbie Teasdale has already claimed a victory in her maiden season on the WPGA Tour of Australasia and undoubtedly a rising star.
Final yr’s runner-up Amy Chu is again in, whereas 18-year-old Maddison Kelly is a history-maker as the primary lady to return by way of the Australian Golf Basis’s junior ladies scholarship program to play in a neighborhood tour occasion.