Fátima Fernández Cano (-14) will play again in 2025 on the LPGA Tour. The Galician golfer, the ‘miracle woman’, has won this Sunday the Guardian Championship of the Epson Tour and has already mathematically secured her jump to the best women’s circuit in the world next season. It is the third victory of the player from Santiago de Compostela in the Epson and it will also be the third time she climbs to the LPGA Tour through this route. Great, Fátima. Impressive.
Fernández Cano has conquered the Guardian Championship with a fantastic final round. She had positioned herself wonderfully with two rounds on Friday and Saturday of 69 and 66 strokes at the Capitol Hill Golf Club course in Prattville, Alabama. Specifically, she started on Sunday from the third position, one stroke behind the Swedish Ingrid Lindblad, former World Number One amateur, and the American Cindy Clanton. Well, with a card of 67 strokes she has surpassed both and has kept at bay the long and hard peloton that had crowded behind the leaders before today’s third and final round. It has been a fight without quarter and Fátima has taken the cat to the water.
The Galician started very strong from the beginning. She made a birdie on hole 1 and repeated on 5, 8 and 9. Against her, only one bogey on 7. She faced the last nine holes completely involved in the fight and delivered the coup de grace with two birdies on holes 13 and 14, a par 3 and a par 4. Then, she finished with four consecutive pars to achieve victory, while Lindblad finished with a bogey on 18 to finish second one stroke behind the Spaniard. Fátima had gone out in the penultimate match and had to wait for the end of the Nordic to confirm her victory.
So, the 28-year-old Compostela player is going to make a big leap in the Race For The Card, the Epson Tour ranking. She is going to move from eleventh place to third. The top 15 ascend to the LPGA. That is, with two tournaments and the grand final left, she has it done. She is an LPGA Tour golfer. Fátima has cemented this gigantic conquest in a fabulous summer. She started in July with a fourth place and a third place, continued last week with a second and now she has finished it off in a big way, with a victory and, in addition, at home, as she has her usual residence in Alabama when she is in the United States.
Let’s remember that Fátima started the year with the card of the Ladies European Tour and the Epson Tour. She made the titanic decision to compete on both sides of the Atlantic, before betting on one of the two routes. Her main goal from the beginning has been the return to the LPGA Tour and she already has it in her hand. This victory and this return to the elite of women’s world golf come after a year where she really had a hard time due to wrist discomfort.
