Shiho Kuwaki won the AIG Women's Open in a playoff over Esther Henseleit at Royal Lytham & St Annes, closing at 5-under 279 for her first LPGA Tour win and first major title.
Photo: Wojciech Migda / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. File photo of the Women's Open trophy from 2010 at Royal Birkdale, not this year's presentation at Royal Lytham & St Annes.
Shiho Kuwaki won the AIG Women's Open in a playoff over Esther Henseleit on Sunday at Royal Lytham & St Annes, closing at 5-under 279 for her first LPGA Tour win and her first major title. Henseleit forced extra holes with a 45-foot (14m) birdie on the 72nd hole before a wayward tee shot on the second playoff hole ended her bid, and 54-hole leader Yealimi Noh slipped to 3rd after a closing 74.
Kuwaki's closing 70 wasn't the round that stood out on the leaderboard Sunday, it was the round that held up. She played her final 18 holes at even par while the players around her moved in both directions, and a 5-under total that looked ordinary an hour earlier turned out to be exactly the number the tournament needed a playoff to settle. Her card for the week, 66-70-73-70, shows a player who built an early cushion in round 1 and then did the harder work of defending it through two rounds in the 70s without the total ever slipping out of contention.
The win doubles up two milestones at once, her first LPGA Tour title and her first major, a combination that doesn't happen for most players who break through at this level. More often a player banks a regular Tour win first and adds a major later, once the pressure of a career-first title is already behind them. Kuwaki cleared both bars in the same week, under the added weight of a playoff, against a field that included two players with multiple 2026 majors already banked.
Henseleit's route to 279 ran almost the opposite direction, a 73 to open the week and a 67 in round 3 before her closing 70 caught Kuwaki at the wire. Her 45-foot (14m) birdie on the 72nd hole forced the extra holes in the first place, the kind of putt that turns a tournament that looked decided into one that isn't. For a few minutes it read like the turn that would carry her all the way to the trophy, exactly the kind of putt that gets me ahead of myself, ready to call the outcome before the wire is actually crossed. It didn't hold. On the second playoff hole her tee shot found the gorse, the recovery was a forced layup rather than a real birdie chance, and the bogey that followed handed the title to Kuwaki two putts later.
Yealimi Noh carried the outright lead into the final round and finished 3rd, a career-best major result that still ends as a round that got away. Her closing 74 wasn't a collapse in the way a big number would be, it was a round that simply couldn't keep pace with two players playing better golf on the same afternoon. A 54-hole lead at a major is a real advantage, but it isn't a guarantee, and Sunday at Royal Lytham & St Annes turned into a reminder of how thin that advantage actually is once the final round starts.
Noh built her lead over three rounds of steady, mistake-avoiding golf rather than any single explosive round, which is part of what made Sunday's 74 harder to explain away than a single bad hole would have been. There was no blow-up number on her card, just a round that gained nothing on a day when two other players gained plenty. A career-best major finish is still a real result, but it's the kind that will read differently in a year than it does the week it happened.
Both of the week's pre-tournament headlines ended in the same tie, for different reasons. Nelly Korda arrived chasing a third major of the season after wins at the Chevron Championship and the U.S. Women's Open, and a tie for 4th at 2-under 282 leaves that bid short for 2026, six shots behind the winning total. Jeeno Thitikul's week told a different story with the same final number. Her bogey-free 64 in Thursday's opening round was the lowest score ever recorded at Royal Lytham & St Annes in this championship, a genuine record that put her at the top of the leaderboard from day one. Rounds of 73-72-73 followed, and the total that once looked like a two-shot cushion turned into the same tie for 4th that Korda ended up with, a much quieter finish than the record round that opened her week.
Neither result erases what each player showed earlier in the tournament. Korda's two-major season is still a two-major season regardless of how this particular week ended, and Thitikul's Thursday 64 stands as a course record independent of where she finished four days later. A tie for 4th closes out the week for both, but it isn't the number either storyline will be remembered by.
For the full field and venue picture, see our AIG Women's Open 2026 preview, our coverage of Korda's third-major bid, and our report on Thitikul's record 64.
Photo: Wojciech Migda / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. File photo of the Women's Open trophy from 2010 at Royal Birkdale, not this year's presentation at Royal Lytham & St Annes.
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