The busy stretch of the LPGA calendar with five consecutive events comes to an end this week with the dispute of the Dow Championship. Or in other words, a relaxed team competition that allows the world’s best players to team up with friends or rivals in search of victory. A total of 144 participants divided into 72 teams that leaves striking details both in general and, more specifically, among the Spaniards.
The Midland Country Club in Midland, Michigan, will be the venue for the fifth edition of this tournament, which introduces some changes. Starting with a change in its name, leaving behind the reference to Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, to a date shift to balance the tight summer schedule that adds the Paris Olympic Games. Passing, of course, by the increase in participants, from 64 to 72 teams, and the prize pool, which grows from 2.7 to 3 million dollars.
Although there are no Rolex Ranking points at stake, the triumph does count as an official victory on the LPGA Tour, with all that entails. So the players, in alternate rounds of foursomes and fourballs over 72 holes, will surely give their best. Including stars like Lexi Thompson, who repeats with Brooke Henderson after missing the cut last year, Celine Boutier and Yuka Saso, who finished third, Rose Zhang and Alexa Pano, who team up for the first time, or lifelong friends and Englishwomen Charley Hull and Georgia Hall, not forgetting Ruoning Yin and Atthaya Thitikul.
As for the Spaniards, two very interesting pairs. ‘Malaga Power’ for Azahara Muñoz and Ana Peláez, who make history by forming a duo of players from the capital of the Costa del Sol in an event of the main women’s circuit worldwide. And a team with Solheim airs for Carlota Ciganda and Swedish Linn Grant, who won the two matches they played as a pair in the Solheim Cup at Finca Cortesín last year. They already agreed to compete as a team in this tournament if their respective schedules allowed it and so it will be, playing the first two rounds in the same match as the Jutanugarn sisters.
A very fun and interesting event, with a cut after the first 36 holes that only the top 33 pairs and ties will surpass, in which the duo formed by Elizabeth Szokol and Cheyenne Knight, who nicknamed themselves the Elizabethan Knights, will try to repeat the title they achieved in the past by beating Kelly Tan and Matilda Castren by one stroke. It was Knight’s second victory in her professional career and Szokol’s first.
