Ella Scaysbrook announced to the golf world in 2025 that this Australian talent is going to be around the top echelon of women’s golf for years to come.
Ella Scaysbrook phones from Newcastle, not long after finishing work at Rippit Golf, a simulator facility where the 19-year-old works hard to help fund her amateur aspirations. She’s one of Australian golf’s brightest prospects and a member of the Golf NSW High Performance squad who plays out of The Australian Golf Club. Recently, Rippit Golf named a simulator bay after her, such was the attention Scaysbrook shone on women’s golf, Australian golf and, by extension, golf in Newcastle.
Scaysbrook had returned to Australia from Singapore in October, where she represented Australia in the Women’s World Amateur Team Championship (also known as the Espirito Santo Trophy). She finished T-18 on the individual leaderboard, while the Australian team was 13th as the US took home the trophy. Only months before, Scaysbrook made headlines around the sporting world, and was even interviewed on CNN, for her Cinderella story: an Australian who was among the last golfers into the field at the US Women’s Amateur Championship, where she took down several big names en route to the semi-finals at famed Bandon Dunes in Oregon.
“It was just a really cool experience,” Scaysbrook says. “It wasn’t easy, with the conditions at Bandon Dunes and just being in that situation.”
Scaysbrook had to go through a qualifier to get into the US Women’s Amateur, then played her way into the top-64 matchplay portion via a 15-for-six playoff. As the 63rd seed, Scaysbrook made an immediate impact with a telling 6&4 win over the second seed, highly touted American star Asterisk Talley. From there, Scaysbrook was dominant in registering consecutive 4&3 victories, before beating Canadian Taylor Kehoe 5&4 in their quarter-final.
Scaysbrook was then 4 up through 12 holes against world No.7 amateur, American Megha Ganne, in their semi-final match, but was beaten by the New Jersey golfer in extra holes. Ganne, the Stanford University star who wore her sponsor Delta Air Lines on her sleeve, would go on to beat Brooke Biermann in the 36-hole final.
“Megha’s had so much experience and she was in her last year at Stanford, so that was her seventh year playing in the US Women’s Amateur, which is crazy to think about because she would’ve been so young [in her debut],” Scaysbrook says.
Although Scaysbrook wanted desperately to be in the final with a chance to win, she returned home knowing there was an enormous silver lining to her American journey.
“How much the experience actually benefited me, and I already feel like it has, a lot,” she says. “I know that next time I’m in that situation, I’ll be a lot better. But it was just such a great trip, and being by myself and learning how to do it will definitely help me when I turn pro.
“It was nice to see how my game compared to [top American and international golfers], and now I know that I’m the same as them, even better in some aspects,” she says. “So that was really cool to see, knowing that I’m on the right path. Obviously, the golf scene in Australia is a little bit smaller than the US, but I just need to keep doing what I’m doing, because it’s working.”
FROM PORT MACQUARIE TO THE AUSTRALIAN
Scaysbrook’s path to the elite American level of women’s amateur golf began thousands of kilometres from the windswept Oregon coastline. In fact, her journey didn’t begin in Sydney or Newcastle. She grew up in Port Macquarie, on the New South Wales Mid-North Coast, before moving south to Newcastle in her mid-teens. That move, she says, was pivotal to her golf success.
“I moved from Port Macquarie when I started Year 10 here, so I think I was 15,” she says. “I moved here pretty much for golf, to be closer to Sydney, because Sydney is kind of the main base of Golf NSW, and that’s where we go for high performance [sessions] twice a week. I have a membership at The Australian Golf Club and play pennants for them. That was another thing that elevated my golf, I would say. A lot of opportunities grew from moving here.”
That decision to base herself at The Australian – one of the nation’s most prestigious clubs – gave her access to elite competition, better facilities and the state’s high-performance squad. She also trains under respected Newcastle coach Jason Laws, whose influence has helped refine her already natural swing into one of the cleanest in Australian amateur golf.
“My golf swing’s quite simple,” she says. “I’ve worked hard on it, and I’ve always swung it pretty similar. It’s obviously improved over the years as I’ve gained more knowledge in my own body and growing and everything. Jason’s helped me a lot with it, too.”
Laws told Australian Golf Digest Women it has taken years of her working on the fundamentals – grip, alignment, posture – to achieve the repeatability and simplicity that seems effortless.
“I think the simplicity comes from understanding how her body and arms work in sequence,” Laws says. “It keeps everything working together and that’s why it looks compact. That’s why it looks simple. That’s why it doesn’t look like it has a lot of moving parts. It’s just consolidating basics. You look at Scottie Scheffler, he goes on the range and works on his posture, his grip. Everyone should do that. That’s the difference with Ella, she’s so dedicated to working on her setup.
“The golf swing has a kinematic sequence. You’ve got the club, the chest and the hips. If you set out everything together, it works together and becomes repeatable. The more you drill people doing the same movements, their pattern can always be the same.”
Scaysbrook also revealed a performance idea that fast-tracked her results and competitive fire. It’s reminiscent of the great Karrie Webb’s golf upbringing in North Queensland.
“I train with the boys, mainly at high performance, so comparing my game and everything to boys makes it a lot different, just because they are a lot… I wouldn’t say better, but their skills are so good. Practising, playing off the men’s tees and trying to beat them, it has made my golf game a lot better.”
Like many elite athletes, Scaysbrook’s journey into her chosen sport was not pre-ordained. In fact, golf began almost by coincidence.
“I’ve actually got a funny story how I got into golf,” Scaysbrook recalls. “My dad plays golf and we were shopping for dad’s birthday one year at Drummond Golf, and I saw a little pink set of golf clubs, and I said to Mum, ‘I want those for Christmas.’ So, they were like, ‘Oh. We’ll only get it for you if you use them,’ and my dad took me to my first golf clinic out at Wauchope [20 minutes from Port Macquarie],” she recalls, laughing. “And then everything just grew from there.”
What began as a spontaneous request for a pink set of clubs became something much more serious. Golf also prompted Scaysbrook to make an early life decision between two very different passions.
“I grew up being a really competitive dancer and just played golf on the side, and then I got to a point where, because [dance] was quite full-on as well, with travelling, and a lot goes into it,” she says. “I was like, I have to pick one or the other, so I just picked golf. I’m not really sure what drew me to it, but I was just good at it and enjoyed it so much, so I just stopped dancing as a young teenager, took up golf more seriously and played it almost every day.”
Opportunities to play alongside other girls were limited in regional NSW, but Scaysbrook never let that hold her back.
“In Port Macquarie, they used to run girls’ clinics, so there was a few girls that I used to train with. When I moved to Newcastle, there weren’t actually that many girls playing golf anymore. I either practise by myself with my dad or with a couple of other boys. But when we go play events and everything, I’ve got so many good girl friends from different states, but a lot of them went to [US] college.”
Despite her friends choosing the American college pathway, Scaysbrook believed it wasn’t for her. Especially when she looked at the journey of her idols, major champions Minjee Lee, Hannah Green, Grace Kim and Steph Kyriacou.
“I hated school,” Scaysbrook says with a laugh. “That was one of the big things for me. I had a lot of good colleges giving me good offers, but I felt like I’m doing pretty well here. The Australian program’s gotten so much better, and I look up to Grace Kim and Steph Kyriacou… and they didn’t go to college, including Hannah and Minjee. In my opinion, Australians do a lot better if you don’t go to college, just because it is so far away. It’s a big move. I guess you do get a degree, so a lot of the girls go over and get a degree and play golf. It’s definitely an option, but I just decided that it wasn’t for me.”
THE FUTURE CALLING
Scaysbrook’s ambitions are clear and uncompromising: she wants to play on the LPGA Tour – and stay there.
“Definitely, I want to get to the LPGA Tour and have a long career there,” she says. “I’m thinking about turning pro, probably end of next year and play in the LPGA Q-school. But a lot of good things come from having a low [amateur] world ranking; I think if you’re top-50 in the world, you get straight through first stage into second stage, which is a big difference. But if you don’t make it fully through LPGA, you can get some Epson Tour status. And there’s still LET Q-school.”
If Scaysbrook has learned anything in 2025, it’s that she can compete with anyone. And the proof is in the results this year: in Australia, she won the NSW Silver Cup and finished runner-up at the Queensland Amateur. In the US, she narrowly missed reaching the US Women’s Amateur final and then added strong results in two other elite tournaments: a ninth at the Women’s Western Amateur and a 17th at the North & South Women’s Amateur.
“I’m very confident in every part of my game,” Scaysbrook says. “Having that good run gives you a lot of confidence in everything, especially after that and beating Asterisk [Talley] and some of the top-ranked girls after I pretty much just qualified to be there. I’m thinking about doing that trip again next year, because I’m [exempt] into the US Women’s Amateur for another two years.”
Another trip to the US to compete with some of the world’s women amateur golfers sounds like a wonderful plan when you’ve already proven you can beat them.
Main photo by Yong Teck Lim/getty images
