Who is Ashleigh Buhai? All you need to know about the South African golfer

Ashleigh Buhai fired a round of -10 at the BMW Las Vegas Championship to head to the second day in first place. It was a virtually flawless Thursday with 10 birdies and zero bogeys.

Ashleigh Ann Buhai (née Simon) hails from Johannesburg, South Africa, where she was born in 1989. She excelled in golf at a very young age and had an extremely successful amateur career.

At the age of 14, she won the 2004 South African Open. A year later, she won the Pam Golding Classic and in 2006, she added the Nedbank Masters (all Ladies African Tour events).

She also won the Jack Newton Junior International Classic in Australia in 2004 and the AJGA Rolex Tournament of Champions in the United States in 2006. Buhai won the South African Amateur Stroke Play Championship four times (2004-07) and the South African Amateur Match Play three times (2004, 2006, 2007).

In 2007, she repeated her victory at the South African Open.

Buhai turned professional in 2007 and began this phase of her career on the domestic circuit in her native South Africa. However, she quickly broke new ground on the Ladies European Tour (LET).

In 2007, she won the Catalonia Ladies Masters on the LET. She was the youngest player to win as a professional on the circuit and opened the doors to the main European circuit.

In Europe, Ashleigh Buhai has been very successful and continues to play there to this day. She has won three other tournaments at this level, the 2011 ISPS Handa Portugal Ladies Open and her third and fourth victories at the South African Open (2018 and 2023).

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Ashleigh Buhai's LPGA Tour Career

The South African made her debut on the main world's professional circuit at the age of 16. It happened at the 2005 Women's World Cup of Golf. As a professional, her first LPGA Tour event was the Jamie Farr Owens Corning Classic. She was cut there.

Major champion Ashleigh Buhai (Image via Getty).

However, Buhai earned an exemption to play the next season on the LPGA Tour. Things didn't quite go her way in 2008, but she managed to stay at that level with varying degrees of stability in subsequent seasons. She eventually earned her official membership in 2014.

Buhai has also continued to play on other circuits, most notably on the Sunshine Tour, where she has shone. She has won 10 tournaments between 2014 and 2023 on that particular tour.

Ashleigh Buhai entered the winner's circle on the LPGA Tour in 2022 and won nothing less than her first major (AIG Women's Open). She certainly got a taste of victory and in 2023, she won the ShopRite LPGA Classic in June.

The current season on the LPGA Tour has been a positive one for Buhai, with 19 tournaments played, 13 cuts and six top-10 finishes, including the aforementioned victory.