The fifth edition of the ambitious women’s golf event The Athena tees off this weekend as a new rising star of Australian golf looks to join its impressive honour roll.
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LPGA players Grace Kim, Steph Kyraciou, Cassie Porter and Karis Davidson as well as the Ladies European Tour’s Kelsey Bennett and Kirsten Rudgeley all took part in The Athena during the formative years of their professional careers in Australia.
Now, it will be turn of the next up-and-comer in Australian women’s golf’s impressive pipeline to showcase themselves to the Australian public.
That is what the event is all about.
The Athena is designed to do things differently and provide Australia’s emerging female golf talent with a platform to show off their stunning skills and personalities in a made for television tournament.
The concept is entirely original with the event staged over two days with the first day full of skills-based challenges, before four-hole match play contests decided the champion on day two.
There is music playing, the crowd is encouraged to be loud, and golf’s traditional dress code is forgotten as the players express themselves through their attire and many other ways, including dancing on the tee box.
Peninsula-Kingswood Golf Club in Melbourne’s south-east is playing host this year and will welcome 12 of Australia’s best female golfers.
– When is The Athena on and how do I watch? –
The Athena will be broadcast live and exclusively on Fox Sports and Kayo from 2pm to 6pm AEDT on Saturday 1 March and Sunday 2 March.
– What is the format? –
The opening day’s line up consists of nine different skills challenges where the golfers accumulate points, and they want to be in the top eight at day’s end to book their place in the match play rounds.
They will face a 100m pitch shot, a flop shot, trouble shot, bunker shot, mystery shot (where a random club is selected from a certain distance), long putt, long drive, optimum (straightest) drive and nearest to the pin to test their skills.
The challenges always showcase the incredible talent that sits within Australian women’s golf with highlights a plenty emerging from the opening day’s action.
The second day will look a little more like traditional golf, but still different, with four-hole match play contests taking place.
The top eight will meet in quarter-finals before the field is dwindled down to semi-finals and then a final.
Any matches that are level after four holes will be decided quickly with a putt off used as the tie-breaker with players moving further away from the hole until someone misses and is eliminated.
– Who should we look out for? –
The Athena is a very rare event in that champions do not get asked back.
So, Kelsey Bennett will not defend her crown.
Instead, they clear the way for the next wave of talented Australian female golfers to enjoy a moment in the spotlight.
Sarah Yamaki Branch is always one to watch at The Athena as her bubbly personality shines.
The Queenslander sings and dances to the music in between shots and puts on a show with a golf club in hand – she made a hole-in-one at the Players Series Murray River event earlier this year, where the men and women compete against one another.
Rookie professional Abbie Teasdale has already claimed a victory in her maiden season on the WPGA Tour of Australasia and undoubtedly a rising star.
Last year’s runner-up Amy Chu is back in, while 18-year-old Maddison Kelly is a history-maker as the first girl to come through the Australian Golf Foundation’s junior girls scholarship program to play in a local tour event.
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