ADT brings LPGA season to close
BY Bruce Young | LPGA Tour | 2005 ADT Championship | Preview | 16 Nov 2005
The 2005 USLPGA Tour draws to a close this weekend when the ADT Tour Championship is played over the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach in Florida.
The tournament is restricted to the top thirty money winners on the LPGA Tour for season 2005 with only one of those being an Australian. Karrie Webb has just completed her worst year ever on the LPGA Tour but after the grandeur and emotion of the World golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony this week, she probably cares little about money lists at this time.
The tournament’s defending champion comes as no surprise with Annika Sorenstam looking to win the event for the third time in her last four appearances and for her fourth time overall.
The Trump International Golf Club was opened in 1999 and is a Jim Fazio designed course. Fazio has designed three of the four Trump courses. It is a private golf club with membership costing some US$350,000.
The field includes an interesting mix of the old and the new breed of LPGA Tour golfer ranging from 45-year-old Rosie Jones at one end of the scale to 19-year-old Paul Creamer at the other.
Sorenstam comes off a record breaking win at the Mizuno Classic in Japan at her last start, an event she has now won on five consecutive occasions and with her record here she is the one to beat.
If the Swede is able to win, 2005 will be her second most lucrative year behind her simply amazing performances of 2002.
The most likely to challenge is the brilliant rookie Creamer, who has been three times runner up in her last five starts this season in addition to her winning in Japan in that time. She has won twice in her first season on tour and is clearly on target to win this event before too long if not this year.
Cristie Kerr was runner up here last year but she has not played in nearly a month since finishing fourth at the Samsung World Championship of Women’s Golf.
Only eleven of the thirty players in the field are American.
The tournament carries a purse of US$1 million with US$215,000 to the winner.
