Alice Hewson picked up where she left off on the LET and has continued her good form in the first part of the 2023 season.
After finishing in a share of second place at the season-opener, the Magical Kenya Ladies Open, the Englishwoman backed that performance up with two further top-20 results in Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
Hewson sits in fourth place on the 2023 Race to Costa del Sol with 387 points to her name and is the top-ranked player in the standings heading into this week.
The LET winner has returned to the Joburg Ladies Open at Modderfontein Golf Club, where she finished in a tie for third place last year, and knows that the golf course can be tough.
“It’s nice to be back in South Africa,” said Hewson. “I have some good memories from here both last year and when I won.
“The greens out here are pretty small, so being accurate with the irons will be pretty important.
“There’s a couple of tricky tee shots where it’s easy to be too aggressive, I feel like we’ve got a really good gameplan so it will be sticking to that throughout the week and seeing what we can do.”
Hewson will be teeing it up in the first round at 7.33am alongside South Africa’s Stacy Lee Bregman and Germany’s Alexandra Försterling.
But it was a busy off-season for the Clemson graduate as she made some changes in personnel and also got engaged to fiancée Stephen.
However, those changes seem to be paying dividends at the start of the year and Hewson hopes that will continue for the rest of the season.
She explained: “I made a few different changes in my team at the backend of last year and so it’s nice to see those changes making a positive impact to start this year. It’s been good.
“I’ve been working hard on the putting over off-season, we make some pretty good reads as a team [with caddie Benji Brewer], so hopefully we’ll keep going this year.
“I’m heading into this week with no expectations like normal. I’m treating it like every other week and I’m going to play our own game.”
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