Green looks to ride hot putter to third win at JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro

By Amy Rogers

Hannah Green says there is no doubt in her mind that she is playing the best golf of her career.

The major champion and 7-time LPGA Tour winner has three worldwide wins to begin the season and this week she’ll look to keep her momentum rolling as she tees it up at the JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro where she’s won twice before, going back to back in 2023 and 2024.

There’s just one caveat. Those two victories came when the tournament was played at Wilshire Country Club. Not at its new home at El Caballero Country Club, where the tournament is being staged for the second consecutive season while Wilshire is undergoing course renovations. But Green still managed a tie for ninth last season at El Cab and Green says she feels as confident as ever in her game as she looks to add to her growing list of victories this season which already includes the HSBC Women’s World Championship, the Women’s Australia Open, and the Australian WPGA Championship.

“Obviously I'm very confident and I had the performances that I won, but we still have such a long season ahead,” Green said about her early season success. “Last year was probably one of my most inconsistent years throughout the season, so I want to use this confidence as much as I can and also make sure that I'm not too -- I guess changing my goals too much and putting too much pressure on myself to continue this form.”

For Green and many of the players in the field in Los Angeles, the JM Eagle LA Championship represents a final opportunity to prepare for the season’s first major championship of the year that gets underway next week at the Chevron Championship. Green said she has a tendency to put too much pressure on herself to perform well, especially when it comes to major championships. That tendency will be tested mightily this year as Green says she’s had to remind herself what a rarity it is to still win amongst the players in the world and that it's okay not to not be the one holding the trophy every week.

“I'm sure Nelly probably experienced it when she had the seven wins in a row. It's hard to bring yourself back down to earth,” Green said about tempering her expectations of not winning every week. “At the end of the day you are trying to win. The likelihood of that happening is something still very low.

So what has been behind Green’s hot start to the season?

Green says that after having one of her most inconsistent seasons on the LPGA Tour that she made a putter change in October before the Tour’s trip to Asia which has led to a shift in her performance in 2026. And although Green is coming off a missed cut in her last start at the Aramco Championship, she says she felt her play was much better than her scores reflected as she looks to continue to ride her hot putter this week to the top of the leaderboard in pursuit of a third win at the JM Eagle LA Championship.

“Definitely those three wins, the putter was very hot, but I was also able to hit a lot of greens in regulation, hit a lot of fairways, and try and make golf as boring as possible. That's going to be important here this week at El Cab,” Green said about her approach this week. “The greens are pretty tricky, so making sure you're aggressive with certain pin locations and then also perhaps taking the 20-footer up the hill instead of maybe a 10-footer down the hill. I am hoping that I can putt well because I think that will be the difference to the person who wins this week.”