The second major championship of the LPGA season comes this week at Westchester Country Club, a venue steeped in tradition from a longtime relationship the club had with the PGA Tour. This will be the first time the women have competed on the course.

“You can’t hope to be on a better golf course than this,” said Cristie Kerr, a part-time New York resident. “I’m not just saying that because it’s a little bit of a home game. I’m saying that because it is such a scenic, beautiful, tough as nails golf course that we deserve as a tour to be on. We are great players and it’s great to be on a venue that has this much history to it.”

Here are some facts about Westchester:

The Harrison, N.Y., course was designed by Walter J. Travis in 1922. Travis won four U.S. Amateur titles in the early 1900s. There are 36 holes on site, highlighted by the West Course, this week’s tournament venue.
The course will play to par 73 (36 out, 37 in) and 6,670 yards. For those who were used to seeing the par-71 course when the PGA Tour played here, the 12th and 15th holes will play as par 5s measuring just less than 500 yards in length instead of lengthy par 4s as they during the PGA Tour visits. This gives participant five par 5s, including three on the back nine. The nines are reversed for tournament competition from the usual West Course setup for the membership.
When Westchester’s West Course was last used for a PGA Tour event, the 2007 Barclays, it measured 6,839 yards, the fifth shortest course on the 2007 PGA Tour schedule.
The PGA Tour played nearly 50 years of tournaments at Westchester, beginning in 1963 with the Thunderbird Classic, won by Arnold Palmer. His win was followed by victories by Tony Lema in 1964 and Jack Nicklaus in 1965. Nicklaus won the first Westchester Classic in 1967. The PGA Tour played at this venue until 2007 when Steve Stricker won The Barclays. Fred Couples won the Senior Players Championship at Westchester in 2011. Among the other winners at Westchester were Raymond Floyd, Seve Ballesteros, Hale Irwin, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh.
The start and finish of the West Course are noteworthy. The first hole is a 180-yard par 3, a rarity in professional golf. The 18th is a 532-yard dogleg left par 5 going uphill to the clubhouse. In 1982, Bob Gilder holed a 251-yard 3-wood for double eagle in the third round to take a big lead in the Westchester Classic en route to a victory. A plaque in the fairway commemorates the shot. In 2005, Padraig Harrington made a 61-foot eagle putt on the 72nd hole to beat Jim Furyk by one stroke.

History: Old and new

This year marks a new era in the major championship, with a new title sponsor (KPMG) and a first-year affiliation with the PGA of America. This new relationship adds to the illustrious history of the tournament:

The first Women’s PGA Championship was held 60 years ago in Fort Wayne, Ind., at Orchard Ridge Country Club. Beverly Hanson won the 1955 LPGA Championship title in a one-year format that may remind some of the stroke play-match play format the NCAA now uses. The format called for 54 holes of medal play and then 36 holes of match play between the top two players on the final day to determine the champion. Hanson beat Louise Suggs 4 and 3 in the final. The PGA Championship at the time was also a match-play event. The last PGA contested at match play was in 1957 when Lionel Hebert beat Dow Finsterwald.
The tournament has been held in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, South Carolina, Ohio and Delaware. The plan is to play a different course each year with a focus on the New York area in deference to sponsor KPMG’s needs. However, courses in other areas could become a possibility also depending upon the schedule.
Mickey Wright has won more titles than anyone (four). Her wins were in a shot period of time – 1958, 1960, 1961 and 1963 – at three different venues. The last two occurred at the Stardust Country Club in Las Vegas.
A Suzann Pettersen note: The last player to win the week before and claim the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship the following week was Inbee Park in 2013. There have been nine winners the week before and week of, including Annika Sorenstam twice. Pettersen won the Manulife LPGA Classic last week.
The last two KPMG Women’s PGA Championships have finished with a playoff, both won by Inbee Park. Park defeated Catriona Matthew on the third hole of sudden death in 2013 and topped Brittany Lincicome on the first extra hole last year.

1 to 1: Ko vs. McIlroy

The second major of the LPGA season is followed by the second major for the men when the U.S. Open takes place next week at Chambers Bay in Washington.

Lydia Ko has been ranked No. 1 in the world for 19 consecutive weeks, just ahead of former No. 1 Inbee Park. Park finished T11 and Ko T27 at last week’s Manulife LPGA Classic. Park could overtake Ko this week.

In honor of the consecutive weeks of major championships, let’s take a comparative look at the No. 1-ranked players in the world, Ko and Rory McIlroy, during their LPGA and PGA Tour careers, respectively:

Category	Ko	McIlroy
Age	18	26
Weeks at No. 1	19	44
Career Low Round	63	61
Career High Round	80	80
Wins	7	11
Majors	0	4
Cuts-Starts	53-53	82-93
Top 10s	29	44

Cheyenne Vs. Tiger

Cheyenne Woods had the biggest moment of her LPGA career last week at the Manulife LPGA Classic. She also beat her famous uncle, Tiger, head to head for the first time. Tiger shot 19 strokes higher at the Memorial Tournament.

The first-year LPGA player carded her career-low round and tied the course record with a 9-under-par 63. It was the first time she held the lead after any LPGA round. Woods hit all 14 fairways, 16 greens in regulation and needed only 26 putts in a round that included an eagle, eight birdies and a three-putt bogey on the sixth hole.

Woods finished the tournament with three over-par rounds to place T54. Her best finish so far this season was a T24 at the JTBC Founders Cup in March.

It was only the fourth time that Cheyenne and Tiger competed in the same week at LPGA and PGA Tour events. She was lower in three of the four rounds (by 10 and 11 strokes in the first and third rounds, respectively) and had a lower tournament total for the first time. Here’s how they compared head to head:

Ending Date	Tournament, Cheyenne Scores/Finish	Tournament, Tiger Scores/Finish
July 8, 2012	U.S. Women’s Open, 75-78/MC	Greenbrier, 71-69/Cut
Feb 24, 2013	Honda LPGA Thailand, 76-80-76-73/T68	Match Play/T33
Sept. 14, 2014	Evian, 77-72/MC	BMW, 66-72-66-71/T11
June 7, 2015	Manulife, 63-73-74-73/T54	Memorial, 73-70-85-74/71

Summer’s coming

Summer doesn’t officially start until June 21, but by looking at the LPGA schedule, you get a feeling that the heat of the season is here, beginning this week.

“The summertime is when you want to be playing your best golf,” Stacy Lewis said. “ That’s when we have our biggest events, the most number of events. So this really for a lot of people and for me is a kick start into the rest of the year.”

The next 10 tournaments include the remaining four major championships, concluding with the Sept. 10-13 Evian Championship.

Etc.

Golf Channel and NBC will show this week’s tournament: 1-4 p.m. EDT Thursday and Friday on Golf Channel and 3-6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday on NBC. Terry Gannon and World Golf Hall of Famer Judy Rankin will headline the Golf Channel coverage. Dan Hicks (play by play) and Gary Koch and Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam (analysis) will be featured on NBC’s coverage. Rankin was a member of ABC’s golf team that covered many Westchester men’s tournaments. … This week’s purse is $3.5 million, more than a $1 million boost in the payday. The U.S. Women’s Open has the largest purse, $4 million. … 99 of the top 100 in the world are entered in this week’s tournament.

Stats and Stuff: Historic Westchester to test KPMG Women’s PGA Contestants

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