The first Australian Women’s Amateur Championship was played in 1894. It was held at Geelong in Victoria as a 36-hole Bogey Competition and seventeen players took part with handicaps ranging from scratch to 24. Competitors played for the Championship Cup (which cost 25 pounds to purchase) and the first competitor to be presented with it was Eveline McKenzie from Victoria.

For the next seven years, the competition was staged at either Caulfield (the original site of Royal Melbourne) or Geelong and Miss McKenzie won another three of these events, in 1895, 1896 and 1898. At the turn of the century, courses in South Australia (Glenelg in 1903) and New South Wales (Bondi in 1901 and 1904) became tournament venues.

Throughout the early 1900s, Ladies’ Golf Unions sprung up across the country. By 1903, the NSW Ladies’ Golf Union was up and running. Soon after came the Victorian Ladies’ Golf Union in 1906 and in 1908, the Western Australian Ladies’ Golf Union was founded.

By 1906, the Women’s Amateur was held as part of the Championship Meeting played under the auspices of the Australian Golf Union and this continued even after the Ladies’ Golf Union was formed in 1921. The women then took control of their own destiny in 1926 and two years later switched from a 54-hole stroke play format to two rounds of stroke play qualifying, with the leading eight players advancing to match play and a 36-hole final.

In 1935, every Australian state was represented in the tournament for the first time, along with a touring team of six from Great Britain, comprising a field of ninety-one entries. Twenty years later, the number of players advancing to match play had increased to 32 and championship entries exceeded a hundred.

At varying times the ALGU considered reverting to a stroke play format but it was agreed that programs in the individual states provided sufficient exposure to that format so today the championship maintains the stroke play qualifying rounds and match play schedule that has served it for the best part of a century.

Since 2007, the tournament has been played in conjunction with the men’s Australian Amateur Championship and it now has a handicap limit of around 3 and a maximum field of 72 players. The Ross Herbert National and International Teams Trophies were introduced in 2009 and are played for during the stroke play portion of the event.

In the twenty editions staged before World War I, there was only one overseas winner, a Miss M. Backhouse from Great Britain at Royal Melbourne in 1905. In the following twenty tournaments played before World War II, there was another British victory (Miss J. B. Walker at Royal Melbourne in 1935) and three wins for a couple of Kiwi golfers: Mrs Guy Williams at The Australian in 1920 and Miss Oliver Kay at Victoria in 1933 and Royal Adelaide in 1936.

In 1955, Englishwoman Veronica Ansley, a Curtis Cup player, won at The Australian. Eight years later, the great Canadian amateur Marlene Streit captured the trophy at Royal Sydney and she was followed onto the winner’s podium a decade later by Irish internationalist Maisie Mooney at Metropolitan in 1973.

A 19-year-old Edwina Kennedy from New South Wales became the first (and so far only) Australian to win The Women’s Amateur championship at Notts in England in 1978 but she was already a 4-time Australian junior champion by then. She did, however, have to wait until 1986 at The Grange before she managed to secure the premier women’s amateur title in her own country.

She represented Australia many times, including four world amateur team championships. The same year that she won the major women’s prize in the UK, she helped the Australian team win gold in the Espirito Santo Trophy tournament at Pacific Harbour in Fiji. Two years later, she helped the team bring home silver in the same competition from the Pinehurst resort in the United States.

In the new millennium, there’s been a steady stream of champions who were either born in Korea or have a strong family connection with that country, starting with Sarah Oh at Capricorn in 2005. Since then, Helen Oh (2006), Sunny Park (2007), Lydia Ko (2012), Minjee Lee (2013 and 2014), Min-Ji Park (2016), Hye-jin Choi 2017) and Hong Yae-eun (2019) have all been crowned as the Australian Women’s Amateur champion.

Three women are tied for winning the most number (4) of championships: Mona McLeod from Victoria (1921-1932); Pat Borthwick from New South Wales (1948-1956); and Sandra McCaw from Victoria (1972-1984).

Royal Melbourne has hosted most tournaments (15) on several different courses, followed by Royal Adelaide and Royal Sydney (each with 10). The Australian has staged nine Australian Women’s Amateur events, then comes Royal Queensland with eight.

You will not find Bondi (1901-2), Geelong (1894-1900) or Kingston Beach (1956 & 1964) below as they’re currently not featured in any of our Australian listings.