Tournament Preview | Article by Bruce Young | 23 Mar 2005 14:58

Course: Mission Hills Country Club (Dinah Shore Tournament Course)

Location: Rancho Mirage, CA, USA

While the debate about the relative merits of the Players Championship at Sawgrass being a major or not goes on, the LPGA Tour play their first real major of the year in California this week when the Kraft Nabisco tees of on Thursday.

The event is just the fourth tournament of the 2005 LPGA season but they have always begun their major season early, in fact last year this was just their third tournament of the year. Not that it will make a lot of difference for Annika Sorenstam who is already into the swing of things with two wins in her first two starts of the year.

Grace Park will defend her 2004 title when she headed home Aree Song by one and Karrie Webb by two to claim her first major championship win. Park went on to complete her best ever year in 2004, finishing second on the money list, winning twice and recording ten other top threes. Unfortunately for Park however, the start of 2005 has not been so good, her best being 19th in the two starts she has had. She withdrew from the Safeway International last week.

The tournament is staged, as it has been for the last 33 years, at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Palm Springs, California. This is one of three courses on the complex and was designed by the late Desmond Muirhead and built in 1970. The course measures some 6460 yards for the Ladies, one of the longer courses they will play all year and consists of perhaps the strongest finishing stretch on the USLPGA Tour.

Those who have started well this year, and who have form here over the years, are those who can be expected to be in the mix on Sunday. Players in that category are Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, Juli Inkster, Cristie Kerr, Lorena Ochoa and Hee Won Han, although the potential winners list does not stop there. Sorenstam has won this event twice and been second twice and in the form she is in right now then she is the logical favourite to win again. We might well have thought that last year though and she could only manage 13th.

Webb is a previous winner here and her runner up placing to Sorenstam in Mexico two weeks ago indicates that she is not far from the sort of form she will need to win this week. She was impressive in winning in Australia last month but of course this is a much, much stronger field.

Inkster is the battle hardened campaigner who continues to show that age (44) is no barrier. Her third pacing last week in Arizona suggest she has started the year in good form and her impressive record here, where she has won twice and hardly ever finished outside the top twenty, is testament to the fact that the course fits her eye and if things go her way she can contend for the title.

Cristie Kerr as I have often said previously is a big event player and if ever there was a year for the 27-year-old to win a major this could be it. She has played well at this course in recent years, finishing fifth last year and has made a good start to 2005 with a 2nd and 3rd in her first two outings.

Lorena Ochoa looks to me to be close to something very special in the game. She is shaping up as the heir apparent to Sorenstam's crown as the number one player in the game and although that may well be a year or two away, she is doing everything to suggest that it is not a remote possibility. She has made a good start to the year and if she can recover from her disastrous finish last Sunday when she let Sorenstam snatch victory from the jaws of defeat then she can contend. She has played well here finishing 8th as an amateur in 2002, 3rd in 2003 and 8th again last year. Two top fives in her last two starts indicate where she is at with her game.

There are many others whose appearance here will generate much interest. Michelle Wie was fourth last year as a 14-year-old and she has played well in a couple of starts already this year. She was 12th last week and 2nd in Hawaii.

Ai Miyazato will have a fanatical Japanese press watching her every move as was the case in Australia. She is simply brilliant however and she gets her chance to show her skills on perhaps her greatest stage to date. Her fellow countrywoman and prolific winner in Japan, Yuri Fudoh, is also here.

Other Australians in the field are Rachael Hetherington who was runner up in 2001, Wendy Doolan, Katherine Hull, Michelle Ellis and Katherine Hull.

The tournament is worth $US1.8 million.