When she tapped in for a par on No.10 to defeat Jenny Bae, who had overcome a six-stroke deficit to tie her at nine-under through 54 holes, Zhang put her hand over her mouth and exhaled.

Beginning the day with a five-stroke lead after setting the Championship’s 36-hole scoring record, Zhang double bogeyed the 1st hole and was four-over-par through seven holes when play was suspended due to inclement weather.

After play resumed, she played even par the rest of way as Bae, playing one group ahead, went three under-over her final 10 holes, pulling even with Zhang with a tap-in birdie at No.17.

“When your swing’s uncomfortable, it’s always very hard to play on a very difficult golf course, and Augusta National is no exception,” Zhang said. “Especially with it being such a big stage, every mistake is sort of magnified. So, I think that just being able to kind of get back on track, that was my biggest feat today. I was able to have the outcome that I wanted while staying in the moment.”

Zhang, a sophomore at Stanford, has held the No.1 ranking for 133 weeks in a row and was the pre-Championship favourite in a strong international field that featured 44 of the top-50 ranked amateurs in the world.

“I'm just really proud of myself in terms of how I was able to overcome so much media, so much expectation: going into the event everyone was talking about how I should win, how this will finalise the trio of amateur golf,” Zhang said, referring to her having won the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur, the 2021 U.S. Girls’ Junior and the 2022 individual NCAA title as well as the team title as a freshman at Stanford.

Bae, a fifth-year student at the University of Georgia, tied the low round of the day at two-under 70. Sweden’s Andrea Lignell placed third at six-under for the week.