Negotiations for the next staging of the women’s Australian Open are ongoing after officials abandoned the dual-gender format that has been played for the past three years, with both tournaments returning to stand-alone events. World No.2 Rory McIlroy is locked in for a return to the men’s event being played at Royal Melbourne in December, but the women’s tournament is set to be played early in 2026, a return to a timeslot more favourable to attract the world’s best players. The last stand-alone women’s Australian Open was co-sanctioned with the LPGA Tour, played in Adelaide in February 2020, and attracted an elite field including world No.1 Nelly Korda, who won the event in 2019. Lee reached a career-high ranking of No.2 in 2022, and had been a constant in the world’s top 10 until midway through 2024 as she endured a 19-month winless drought. The 29-year-old went into the PGA Championship ranked 24, having dropped out of the world’s top 20 for the first time since 2015. But her return to the winner’s circle in Texas delivered the rankings bump, lifting her over great friend Hannah Green, who fell out of the top 10 to No.11 and lost her place as Australia’s highest-ranked player, male or female. Jason Day, who finished fourth at the $30m Travellers Championship, is the only Australian male in the world’s top 30, ranked 28. In the wake of her win, Lee revealed how hard her coach, Richie Smith, had to work to get her to make the drastic switch to the long putter, a move that put her back on a path towards the No.1 ranking. “I think he mentioned it to me like twice and I was like mucking around with it, so I would say it was a good change,” she said. “I think just for me, it was taking the hands out of the putter. Just using my hands too much. So I was like manipulating the putter to the break. For me it was just using more of my shoulders to hit the point where I thought it was going to break and not making it break. “I feel like I had a lot of doubt the past few years … I guess with my long game but more with my putting. “I think the more I heard media and other people saying things about my putting, I think it got to me more and more over time. “I guess I just had a lot of thoughts and just I was overthinking probably about just the conventional way of putting … and using the broomstick has really been helping me.” Lee now has more majors than Greg Norman, who only won two, but is yet to reach the No.1 ranking the Great White Shark held for a mammoth 331 weeks. Adam Scott and Day have also been world No.1, but there has never been an Australian female No.1, not even seven-time major champ Karrie Webb, with the women’s rankings only introduced in 2006. But Lee declared she had greater ambitions than getting to world No.1. “I really wanted to be in the Hall of Fame. That’s why I started golf. That’s why I wanted to be on the LPGA Tour, to, you know, win a bunch of tournaments and try to get into it,” she said. “I think I would really like to get there. We’ll see how we go after this week.”