Many chances at the State Farm Classic
BY Bruce Young | LPGA Tour | 2004 State Farm Classic | Preview | 02 Sep 2004
The State Farm Classic hits the fairways of the Rail Golf Club in Springfield, Illinois, this week and Grace Park is again expected to be in the firing line on Sunday.
The event has been played since 1976 when Sandra Palmer won the inaugural event and has been played at the Rail Golf Course every year since. The course is a George Fazio design built in 1972.
Grace Park comes off her runner up placing to Lorena Ochoa last week, despite a very ordinary Sunday, and that effort suggests she is back to where she was at the start of the year after a comparatively ordinary last few weeks. She has had good form here in recent years, finishing 5th in 2003 and 12th in 2002.
Ochoa missed the only cut of her short LPGA career here last year which doesn’t exactly augur well for this week, but the way she is playing right now she could win on anything. Her victory last week was her second of the season and her consistency is beginning to take on Sorenstam like dimensions. Fourteen top tens in eighteen starts this season, including her two wins, highlights just what a brilliant talent she is, and is going to be, and perhaps placing too much emphasis on her missed cut here last year would be the wrong thing to do.
Hee Won Han is playing well again after a slow start to the year with three top tens in her last four starts, including her third place last week in Pennsylvania, and she was third here last year.
Se Ri Pak finally found form two weeks agio at the Jamie Farr event in Ohio but by her standards it has been an ordinary year. She was second here last year to Candie Kung so may contend.
Kung herself is playing better in recent weeks and in addition to her win here last year she also played well here in 2002.
Patricia Meunier Le-Bouc has had success here in 2002 and now appears to be back in the swing of things after her break from the game to attend to motherhood duties following the birth of her first child.
Of the Australians, Teske and Webb are not here but the ever improving Katherine Hull and Nadina Taylor are. Both are in their rookie years and are doing well. Cherie Byrnes, Michelle Ellis, Loraine Lambert, Joanne Mills, Karen Pearce, Shani Waugh and the interesting newcomer Lindsey Wright are also here. Wright has emerged from a successful year on the Futures Tour where she won twice and finished second on their money list and now has full status on the LPGA Tour for 2005. She had non exempt status in 2004 on the LPGA but decided instead to focus her energies on the Futures Tour and has reaped the benefit of that decision.
The tournament carries a purse of US$1.2 million.
