Shiho Kuwaki came for Q-School. She left with the Women’s Open.
A playoff par at Royal Lytham made the 23-year-old Okayama pro Japan’s second straight AIG Women’s Open champion — and wiped a fall qualifying trip off the calendar.
Hinako Shibuno of Japan at the 2019 Taiwan Swinging Skirt LPGA — the Okayama native who won the Women’s Open in 2019, seven years before fellow Okayama pro Shiho Kuwaki claimed the same major at Royal Lytham.
Photo: S22311275 / CC BY-SA 4.0
Shiho Kuwaki spent a chunk of Sunday afternoon in the scoring room at Royal Lytham & St Annes, watching television like everyone else.
She had just signed for a 1-under 70 and a clubhouse lead at 5-under 279. Esther Henseleit still had the 18th green in front of her.
Then the German’s 40-foot birdie putt dropped, an arm went up before the ball finished falling, and Kuwaki covered her eyes.
Thirty minutes of waiting turned into a playoff. Two holes later, the 23-year-old from Okayama was the AIG Women’s Open champion — her first major, her first LPGA title, and Japan’s second straight Women’s Open after Miyu Yamashita a year ago.
The finish was pure links golf. On the first extra hole, Kuwaki drove into thick grass short of a bunker, laid up, and wedged to three feet to save par after Henseleit missed a birdie putt that would have ended it.
On the second trip down the 18th, Henseleit’s tee shot found the gorse. She punched out and missed the par putt. Kuwaki tapped in.
Henseleit took the bounce as links golf does: a bit unlucky, still proud of how she forced the chance. Kuwaki, through a translator with the trophy nearby, kept it simpler. She couldn’t believe it. She had tried to enjoy every hole.
The week around her was louder. Yealimi Noh carried a three-shot lead into Sunday and shot 74, finishing one back — the first player in Women’s Open history to hold a three-stroke 54-hole lead and not win.
Nelly Korda, already a two-major winner this season, closed with a 68 and tied for fourth. Haeran Ryu’s bid for three majors in a year stalled with a 74.
Kuwaki was the quiet one who kept making pars. She played her last 13 holes without a bogey while the leaderboard thinned.
She was also the rare visitor who did not need the LPGA’s full membership to rewrite the week: the first non-member to win this championship since Sophia Popov in 2020.
That detail is the story. Kuwaki had planned to sit LPGA Q-School this fall. The win handed her a five-year exemption instead. “So I don’t have to worry about that anymore,” she said.
With only four months left in the LPGA season, she deferred membership until 2027 and stays rooted in the Japan LPGA circuit that already made her a five-time winner there — including two titles this year.
Okayama will notice. Fellow prefecture native Hinako Shibuno won this same major as a 20-year-old in 2019 and helped open the modern Japanese major wave. Yamashita followed at Porthcawl last August.
Kuwaki makes it three Japanese names on the Women’s Open in eight years, and the seventh Japanese woman to win an LPGA major when you count Higuchi, Shibuno, Saso, Furue, Saigo, and Yamashita before her.
English-language golf still talks more about Korea’s LPGA export machine. Japan’s recent majors have been quieter and just as real — built on JLPGA depth, then proven on links weeks when the name on the card still looks like a visitor.
Kuwaki’s next calendar is the fun part. She does not have to qualify her way onto the LPGA. She already won her way past the door.