Stephenson to be honoured at Masters
BY iseekgolf.com | ALPG Tour | 2008 ANZ Ladies Masters | General | 11 Jan 2008
Golfing great Jan Stephenson has been honoured with an invitation to play in the ANZ Ladies Masters which starts on 7 February at the Royal Pines Resort on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
Stephenson, the winner of 16 US LPGA events including three major championships, will join defending champion Karrie Webb and a strong field of leading Australian and international players in the ALPG Tour’s richest and most prestigious event.
Tournament Chairman Bob Tuohy said the invitation was in recognition of Stephenson’s wonderful achievements on the US Tour and her support of the tournament since its inception in 1990.
“Jan was the person who introduced Tuohy Associates to LPGA golf,” said Tuohy. “She said to come over to Boston on my way home from Europe in 1989 and I spent a week with her at a tournament. That was the incentive to get an LPGA event together in Australia.”
“It turned out to be the Daikyo Ladies Masters at Palm Meadows. It all started through Jan’s initiative and introduction to the LPGA. I had no intention of promoting women’s golf but I was knocked out by what I saw and the rest is history. She played in our inaugural event and helped us attract players including the great Ayako Okamoto and Jane Geddes who won in 1990 and 1991.”
Stephenson burst onto the pro scene as a 19-year-old in 1974 when she finished second at the US Tour school at the beginning of the year and was voted Rookie of the Year at the end. Before that she had a brilliant amateur career at home, winning five consecutive New South Wales schoolgirl championships from 1964 and four straight NSW junior championships from 1969.
Glamorous on and off the course, she attracted big galleries whenever she played and gave them and the tournament organisers value for money. In the six years from 1974 she missed only three cuts in America and won the Australian Open in 1973 and 1977.
Stephenson is the first women golf course designer and is now leading the way in designing with green technology to be environmentally conscious.
While the men’s circuit has only been able to attract two major winners this summer in Geoff Ogilvy and Michael Campbell, Webb and Stephenson have 10 majors between them. The last time the Australian public was treated to a display of such calibre was when Peter Thomson and Arnold Palmer played an exhibition match at The Australian to mark the centenary of the Australian Open in 2004.
The ANZ Ladies Masters, co-sanctioned by the Ladies European Tour and the ALPG Tour, will be broadcast by Network Ten on Feb 9 & 10 2008 and will reach an international audience of in excess of 260 million households.
