Eight times during last year’s final round at the Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give, Lexi Thompson circled her scores on her scorecard to signify birdies.
The leggy blonde carded a six-under 65 in the closing round to complete a come-from-behind victory that ended a 15-month winless drought and hoisted an LPGA tournament trophy for the fifth time in her career. Thompson’s stellar Sunday left her at 18-under-par, a stroke ahead of Solheim Cup teammates Lizette Salas and Gerina Piller at Blythefield Country Club.
Thompson, who won again later in 2015 and added win No. 7 to her resume this February in Thailand, leads the Tour back to the lovely state of Michigan for the second time in the past month for this week’s $2 million event. She will be joined by a bevvy of talented players who are dialed in and performing at extremely high levels as the summer stretch sets in.
Newly minted major champion Brooke Henderson, who outdueled world No. 1 and two-time 2016 winner Lydia Ko in a playoff at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in Sammamish, Wash., on Sunday, will be there looking for more hardware. Ko is also teeing it up this week, along with fellow 2016 tournament champions Haru Nomura, Hyo Joo Kim, Sei Young Kim, Minjee Lee, Jenny Shin, Ariya Jutanugarn and Anna Nordqvist.
Every tournament winner from the year will be between the ropes at the par-71, 6,414-yard course this week in Grand Rapids, and there should be birdies aplenty. Whether it’s Thompson, Ko, Henderson or Jutanugarn – who followed three consecutive LPGA wins with a third-place finish on Sunday – the world’s top female golfers with the hottest games are likely to be mainstays on the leaderboard.
Salas and Piller are also back this week looking to improve their finish from a year ago by one position, and the stacked field also includes the likes of Brittany Lincicome, Na Yeon Choi, In Gee Chun, Shanshan Feng, Suzann Pettersen and Amy Yang. Fans will not be deprived of talent or birdies to enjoy, and red numbers will abound atop the leaderboard.
This week’s event benefits Meijer’s Simply Give program, which restocks the shelves of food pantries across the Midwest. The inaugural tournament in 2014 – won by Mirim Lee, who is playing this week – raised more than $600,000, and the 2015 Meijer LPGA Classic generated $750,000 for the program.
The program has generated more than $21 million for food pantries across the Midwest since its inception in November 2008.
Great golf and giving back – that’s quite a winning combination.
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