Chevron Championship: Lilia Vu's emotional maiden major win at Carlton Woods near Houston

Lilia Vu (left) continued the tradition of jumping in water after winning the Chevron, despite it not being the usual sanitised pond

It was a major that had everything bar crowds of a size commensurate with its prestige.

More people than the sparse galleries who turned up for the record $5.1m (£4m) tournament should have witnessed Lilia Vu's maiden major victory last Sunday.

It came at the first hole of a sudden death play-off, capping a thrilling final day at the Chevron Championship.

The competition had moved from its iconic venue at Mission Hills in California to Carlton Woods near Houston - the home of American big oil. It was a business decision.

Yet watching the golfing drama unfold - and there was plenty - put you in mind of the dark Covid days of behind closed door tournaments.

There were galleries but not anywhere near the numbers to make the event have a big time feel, which is a crying shame because, otherwise, the Chevron had all the ingredients. The course was a proper major test and identified a worthy champion with a compelling back story.

Angel Yin, the golfer beaten in sudden death, also has an inspiring tale to tell, despite faltering on the closing stretch before birdieing the last to take it to extra holes.

Nelly Korda, the Olympic champion and stand out star on the final day, will bemoan squandering a fine chance to land a second major. But her failure showed this was a tournament where no one could fake it.

In the end it was Vu, who had shown trending form, who dissolved into tears of joy and relief at the biggest win of her career. This was a victory that her formative days suggested would be inevitable, but for so long seemed so far away.

The 25-year-old from California had even contemplated giving up the game when she struggled to transition into the paid ranks.

A former amateur world number one and eight times winner in her college days, Vu made just one cut in her rookie season of 2019, earning a mere $3,830 in the process.

Then her inspirational grandfather, who engineered her family's flee from the ravages of the Vietnam War, died at the beginning of the Covid outbreak. The prodigy tipped for greatness was at a complete loss.

"I was in such a bad place," Vu said. "Everything was life or death. I just saw everybody that I've competed with being successful, and I just compared myself all the time."

But she stuck at it and has become a more rounded and mature golfer, slightly less prone to aggressively chasing every pin. In February she won the LPGA tournament in Thailand, a week after finishing third in Saudi Arabia.

Three more top 14s followed in the lead up to the year's first major. Pundits regard her now as the second best American on the circuit behind Korda.

Yet, at Carlton Woods last week she still needed to battle her emotions. "Honestly, the past two days, I was very angry," she admitted.

"I didn't feel like myself, just internally. Golf game, that's whatever. I just felt like I was getting angry over every single little thing, and that's usually not how I roll, so I was upset about how I portrayed myself and how I handled myself."

In the chilly final round she equalled the lowest score of the day with a four-under 68 that included a mere 25 putts and was capped with two crucial closing birdies to post 10 under par.

England's Georgia Hall also shot 68 to finish in a share of 12th in another solid week for the Dorset player. She joined us on our BBC 5 Sports Extra radio commentary a good two hours before the end.

"Ten under will be the winning score," Hall accurately predicted, pointing to the difficulty of the inward half with tucked pins on undulating greens.

Yin looked as though she would pip that number, as did the Thai sensation Atthaya Thitikul, but both faltered. Yin dropped shots on the 16th and 17th, the latter followed an uncontrolled bunker shot after indecision on the par-three tee.

Thitikul found water at the last, running up a double-bogey seven. This feels as though it was the major the 20-year-old had to lose before she makes her breakthrough on the biggest stage - it is surely not far away.

Yin now looks more like the talent who made two Solheim Cup appearances very early in her career. She is till only 24, but a debilitating injury led to her slumping to 172 in the world.

Last summer her shoulder was so bad she could not even unscrew a bottle top. "The last two majors, (the AIG Women's Open) and Evian [Championship], I couldn't even move," Yin said.

"I got super injured out of nowhere, so that was really, like, a low point for me because I couldn't even get out of bed, and I tried to play still, and it was just impossible."

Now she is back and she was the personality of the weekend in Texas after the unexpected early exits of the likes of world number one Lydia Ko, defending champion Jennifer Kupcho, Lexi Thompson and Charley Hull.

"I did play well," the big-hitting Yin said. "I really like this golf course.

"I feel like I have so much potential here, and I feel like it's exciting to come back next year and be able to showcase that and do what I didn't do this year."

The course won universal approval. "It is a proper major test with its length," Hall told us. "These are the courses we should be playing."

Maybe one day the crowds will show up too. This was crackerjack of a major, even if it ended in contrived fashion with the champion diving into the water in the way that winners at Mission Hills did with the sanitised 'Poppie's Pond'.

This time it was a murky, dark, cold lake. Vu had discussed with her caddie the prospect during a practice round. "I was like, 'Yeah, I would jump; if I won here, of course I would jump,'" Vu said.

"Yesterday or the day before we saw a snake in the 17 pond so I was kind of thinking about that today, but I think the emotions were high and just adrenaline said 'got to jump into that pond'."

We are entitled to predict great things for the new champion, however she may have to recover from pneumonia first!