LPGA Tour plays Canadian Women's Open
BY Bruce Young | LPGA Tour | 2011 Canadian Women's Open | Preview | 24 Aug 2011
The LPGA has a long flight between last week’s event in Oregon and this week’s CN Canadian Women’s Open in Mirabel in Quebec.
The Laurentien course is a Graham Cooke re-designed layout, one of two at Hillsdale Golf and Country Club plays host to this event for the first occasion.
Michelle Wie is the defending champion having won her second LPGA Tour event with a wire to wire victory at the St Charles Country club in Winnipeg last year. Wie gets another chance this week but the form she has displayed in recent starts hardly gives any confidence in her chances of a repeat.
“Obviously I have a lot of great memories from last year,” said Wie. “It’s always fun coming back up here and trying to remember different parts of it, and I’m really looking forward to this week. Played 18 holes this morning and the course looks fantastic. It’s in awesome shape, and looks like a very interesting golf course, so I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.
“I didn’t play as well as I wanted to so far, but I’m hoping that this week I can turn things around and play some good golf, and it’s very exciting to come back here.”
That leaves the more favoured players including the world number one and two Yani Tseng and Suzann Pettersen as the logical favourites. Tseng was just average last week in Oregon but that was on a golf course she has never really played well and while this week’s venue is an unknown in some respects she could improve sharply.
Pettersen won this tournament in 2009 and comes off the back of a miraculous victory last week at the Safeway Classic where she overcame a nine shot 54 hole deficit to win. Pettersen and Canada appear to get along just fine, the Norwegian having not only won in 2009 but finished joint second behind Wie last year.
The woman Pettersen caught and passed in a playoff last week, Na Yeon Choi, gets her chance to turn the tables this week. Choi is normally a very consistent player although she did lose her way a little in the middle of the season. She has put together two good tournaments of late and it would not surprise to see her back in the thick of things again on Sunday.
The Australian contingent is headed by Karrie Webb although the 2008 winner Katherine Hull is also in the field. Other Australians are Sarah Kemp, Sarah Jane Smith and Lindsey Wright.
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