3 minute read
Ladies European Tour rookie of the year Steph Kyriacou will headline The Athena at Coolangatta Tweed Heads Golf Club in her 2021 return this weekend.
Steph Kyriacou's rivals should prepare for some banter when the European Tour's rookie of the year launches her season this weekend.
The Sydney 20-year-old heads a 12-woman field of Australia's emerging amateur and professional talents in The Athena, an all-new WPGA Tour of Australasia event at the Coolangatta Tweed Heads Golf Club this weekend.
The two-day event will be broadcast live on Fox Sports and Kayo with a unique skills challenge on Saturday followed by stroke play finals on Sunday.
Kyriacou enjoyed a remarkable 2020 season, winning Bonville's Australian Ladies Classic by eight strokes before turning pro.
She then registered two runner-up and six top-10s, finishing no worse than 17th in her last seven events on the Ladies European Tour (LET) after waiting in Australia for months because of COVID-19 to join it.
She plans to return for a seven-month stint in Europe later this year and has set her sights on "at least" repeating her third on the LET's order of merit list, while adding about 10 metres off the tee and moving into the world's top 90.
Kyriacou will also attempt to qualify for the men's NSW Open and is set to contest this year's men's Queensland Open, where fellow Athena entrant Sarah Wilson was just the second woman to compete last year.
After that she'll head to Europe, via New York to play the first leg of the lucrative Aramco Team Series.
But first there's domestic bragging rights on the line in the Australasian tour's latest initiative.
Players will be tested by nine unique shots from different locations on a hole, with the top eight progressing from the "combine" to Sunday's strokeplay finals.
The quarter and semi-finals will be five-hole strokeplay before the winner is crowned after a three-hole play-off with a $30,000 first prize accompanied by an Adidas endorsement contract.
"I think it's going to be pretty cool; there's no other event like it and lots of sledging I hope," Kyriacou told AAP.
"But no, no targets on backs or anything like that; we're all just friends trying to beat each other and I'm just excited to see everyone again."
A lot has happened since she last played competitively at home, Kyriacou even briefly leading on her major championship debut in August's British Open.
But no overseas feat compared to that eight-shot win at Bonville.
"That was the highlight of the year ... I played pretty good that week," she laughed.
"I thought I was going to South Australia the next week but (then I turned professional) and had to change my flight to go to Saudi Arabia.
"Then it was cancelled (because of COVID-19), which was pretty shit, but what can you do."
When she eventually did leave to play the Scottish and British Open it was only meant to be a two-week trip.
"We were stuck for four months but it was actually a great thing my flights got cancelled," she said.
"I was lucky I got away and out of Australia to play.
"It was still so hard to play in a bubble but I've experienced the worst, now I know what to expect this year and I've got a great story to tell."
THE ATHENA: Steph Kyriacou, Karis Davidson, Robyn Choi, Rebecca Kay, Montana Strauss, Julienne Soo, Kristalle Blum, Tahnia Ravnjak, Steph Bunque, Justice Bosio, Kono Matsumoto, Sarah Wilson.
