British golf veteran Laura Davies has noted the much younger and deeper fields for Australian women’s tournaments as she prepares to embark on her 21st campaign Down Under.
Four-time major winner Davies has been a massive supporter of the Australasian tour for more than two decades, opting to start her season far from home.
She’s back again and will contest the NSW Open at Oatlands in western Sydney, which starts on Thursday.
The field includes defending champion and 15-year-old sensation Lydia Ko of New Zealand and Victoria’s Stacey Keating, who enjoyed back-to-back wins on the European tour last year.
Asked about the changes she had seen from the first time she came to Australia, Davies said: “They are much younger and there’s a lot more of them that are good players.
“Years ago, you used to walk into a locker room – you’d see five or six players and think, ‘right, if I can beat you five, I’m probably going to win this week’.
“Now you’ve got to take on a field of 100 – probably 75 or 80 of them can win it. So it’s depth and youth – I’d say that’s the big difference.”
Davies is one of more than 40 overseas players who will contest the 54-hole event that carries a prize purse of $125,000.
She will play alongside newly-crowned Australian amateur champion Minjee Lee of Western Australia and Queensland’s Sarah Jane Smith in one of the early groups on Friday.
Ko heads out in the group immediately before Davies, where she will joined by Sweden’s 2011 NSW Open champion Caroline Hedwall and Emma de Groot of NSW.