Inbee Park Faces Competition at World Ladies Championship
Apr 3, 2014; Rancho Mirage, CA, USA; Inbee Park on the fifth hole in the first round of the Kraft Nabisco Championship golf tournament at Mission Hills Country Club. Mandatory Credit: Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports
Fresh off her victory at the LPGA HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore last Sunday, Inbee Park is headed for Mission Hills, China and the LET-China LPGA Tour co-sanctioned World Ladies Championship to be played March 12-15. Park, who held the top of the Rolex Rankings for 59 consecutive weeks and is currently ranked 2nd, just below Lydia Ko, will defend the title she notched last year with a five-shot victory that jump-started her 2014 season.
Park went on from Mission Hills in 2014 to capture her 5th major, the Wegman’s LPGA Championship, and 2 additional LPGA titles. Could she be thinking about a 2015 encore? Will she be carrying over the birdie bet she has with her father?
Winning the 2014 World Ladies Championship kicked off a great year for me, so I’m delighted to be coming back to Mission Hills . . . -Inbee Park
Park and
Suzann Pettersen
have established a running rivalry at the Mission Hills event. Pettersen won the Championship in 2013, but Park edged her out last year. Pettersen will be back this year and focused on outplaying her rival and friend.
With Suzann and So Yeon returning and a strong field from the Ladies European Tour to contend with, defending my title won’t be easy . . . -Inbee Park
Inbee Park is very aware that the Pettersen-Park rivalry is only the tip of the Mission Hills competitive iceberg. The World Ladies Championship field also includes the LET’s newest champion,
who, like Park, is coming into Mission Hills fresh off a victory, veteran LET competitor
Gwladys Nocera
, who always performs well in the Asian Events,
, winner of the ALPT-LET co-sanctioned 2015
Oates Victorian Championship
, and rookie
, who notched her first pro victory in February at the
RACV Australian Ladies Masters
.
And Park’s 2014 team partner (as well as the maid of honor at her wedding),
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The World Ladies Championship, with a purse of US$600K will again by staged on Mission Hills Haikou’s signature Blackstone Course, voted Best Championship Course in Asia in 2013. Billed as China’s Cradle of Golf, Mission Hills boasts twelve 18-hole championship tracks and annually hosts the World Cup of Golf and Asian Amateur Championship.
The Blackstone track is Mission Hills’ crown jewel, built on a lava rock base and winding through a challenging landscape that includes thick jungle vegetation, lakes and wetlands water hazards, and some wildly irregular bunkers. It’s a long and difficult track and rewards successful risk-taking. It’s the sort of track that will showcase Inbee Park’s superb course management skills.
This 4th event of the Ladies European Tour 2015 season is unique. Instead of 72 holes of straightforward stroke play, the World Ladies Championship combined three events into its format, an individual professional competition, a team championship in which countries are represented by teams of two, and an individual amateur category.
In addition to winning the individual stroke play event last year Park playing with So Yeon Ryu for Korea, won the team event, which Park also captured in 2013 with teammate Kim Ha Neul. Foreshadowing the very likely Korean dominance of women’s golf at the 2016 Olympics, Park and her partner will again be the odds-on favorites to win the team component of the 2015 Championship.