For Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist, the 2014 Honda LPGA Thailand was a seminal moment of her career.
The leggy blonde enjoyed a marvelous week, closing with a 4-under 68 to edge Inbee Park by two strokes and earn her first LPGA tournament title since 2009. Nordqvist followed the likes of Park, Yani Tseng, Ai Miyazato and Suzann Pettersen as tournament champion in Thailand and went on to win again during a breakout season.
This year, Nordqvist returns to defend her title against a stacked field that includes each of the aforementioned champions and a host of top-level players. From Na Yeon Choi, Stacy Lewis and Paula Creamer, to Michelle Wie, Lexi Thompson and Jessica Korda, fans will have a star-studded field to watch at Siam Country Club’s Old Pattaya Course this weekend.
Rookie Sei Young Kim will also tee it up this week looking to add tournament title No. 2 to her 2015 resume, while last week’s runner-up Amy Yang will attempt to finish one position higher and claim her second career LPGA victory. Consider that Moriya and Ariya Jutanugarn, Azahara Munoz, Beatriz Recari and Hall of Famers Karrie Webb and Se Ri Pak are also playing, and the tournament’s cache grows even more.
A purse of $1.5 million awaits, and players will have to navigate the par-72, 6,548-yard course as deftly as possible to battle their way to the top of the leaderboard. Nordqvist won last year’s event with a 15-under-par total, and Miyazato (2010) and Pettersen (2007) won with 21-under-par totals on the same course, so red numbers will be plentiful.
This week’s event is the midway point of a three-week international stretch for the LPGA, following the ISPS Handa Australian Women’s Open and setting up the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore. It will carry the Tour schedule into March and offer another 500 points in the Race for the CME Globe.
The season is still quite young, but players born in the Republic of Korea have been dominant in 2015, occupying six of the top nine and 10 of the top 20 positions on the LPGA money list. Will they continue to impose their will atop the leaderboard, or will there be a shift in Thailand?
That question, and many more, will soon be answered, and Golf Channel once again will carry all of the action.
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