Annika at the Colonial - The Facts
IN: News | US PGA | Bank of America Colonial (2003) | General | by Bruce Young | 19 May 2003
With just a few days before Annika Sorenstam tees it up at the Bank of America Colonial, it might be appropriate to look at a few facts that may assist if you are planning on having a bet on just how the greatest player in the female game will do this week.
The Colonial Country Club measures 7080 yards or 6525 metres and carries a par of 70. There are two par fives, the first at 565 yards and the eleventh at a massive 609 yards. The shortest par three is 178 yards and the shortest par four 383 yards.
The average length of course played last year on the USLPGA Tour was 6329 yards, some 751 yards shorter than the course she will play this week. What that will mean is the each hole this week will average 40 yards more than the average course played on the LPGA Tour week in week out. She did of course play in events such as the Nabisco, where the length of the course is some 6520 yards. The longest course on the LPGA Tour is the Rail Golf Course at the State Farm Classic which now measures 6558 yards. Two years ago when Annika last played that event and finished second to Kate Golden, she shot twenty under but that year the course measured slightly shorter at 6403 yards. Still it was a rather impressive effort.
The cut the last three years at the Colonial has been either two or three over so a total of 142 or 143 looks likely again to make the top seventy and ties from the 114 man (or should I say person) field.
The greens at Colonial are A4 Bent grass cut to 1/8th of an inch and the fairways 419 bermuda. The greens will run at 10.5 on the stimpmeter during tournament week. The average green size is 5000 sq feet considerably smaller than the average on tour of 6000 sq ft.
