A quick look at this week’s Wegmans LPGA Championship:
- All three major champions this year have been Americans (Lexi Thompson, Michelle Wie and Mo Martin). Thompson and Martin are competing this week while Wie is sidelined with a finger injury. Thompson’s best finish in three career starts was a T28 last season, and she has shot only one round under par in 10 rounds, all at nearby Locust Hill Country Club. Martin, who is bothered by an injured left thumb, finished T30 two years ago for her best finish in two starts
- All three major winners this season have been first-time major champions. If another first-timer wins this week, it will mark the first time that the first four major winners have been newbies since 2009.
- Donald Ross will be in the spotlight again this week, just as the famed architect was at Pinehurst No. 2 for the U.S. Women’s Open. Monroe Golf Club opened in 1924, at about the same time as nearby and more famous Oak Hill Country Club was debuting.
- This is the 38th time Rochester, N.Y., has hosted an LPGA event and the fifth time the city has been home to the LPGA Championship. The first LPGA event in Rochester was the 1953 U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Rochester when Betsy Rawls beat Jackie Pung in an 18-hole playoff.
- This is the fourth of five majors this season. The Evian Championship, which became a major in 2013, will be played Sept. 11-14 in Evian-les-Baires, France.
- Stacy Lewis, Lydia Ko and Anna Nordqvist have a combined seven victories this season. They’re paired together in the first two rounds this week.
- Golf Channel will show 13 hours of live golf this week from Monroe Golf Club. That includes 3-7 p.m., EDT air times on Saturday and Sunday. The Golf Channel broadcast team includes Terry Gannon, play by play; Judy Rankin, analysis; Tom Abbott, tower; and Jerry Foltz and Karen Stupples, on course.
- Last year, Inbee Park won her third consecutive major of the season at Locust Hill in the Wegmans LPGA Championship. Despite winning once this season, it has been a hard-luck season for the reigning LPGA Player of the Year. She has two runner-up finishes and a third. However, she is on a bit of a roll, as she placed fourth at the Ricoh Women’s British Open despite a final-round 77 and lost in a playoff last week to fellow South Korean Mirim Lee.
- The LPGA and PGA America announced earlier this year that the new KPMG Women’s PGA Championship will debut at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y., next June, replacing the Wegmans LPGA Championship. The tournament will be played at different sites every year.
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