Europe is the focus of the golf world this week and next as The Evian Championship, the final major of the 2015 LPGA season, and the Solheim Cup take place in France and Germany, respectively. The two sites are only a five-hour drive apart.

This week, Inbee Park, the top-ranked player in the world, will receive the most individual attention because of her drive to more historical success.

Here are some notes leading into the fifth major of 2015:

This week’s The Evian Championship offers Inbee Park an opportunity to achieve yet another historical milestone. When she won The Evian Championship in 2012, it was one year before the tournament became a major. Park has won the ANA Inspiration, KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, U.S. Women’s Open and the Ricoh Women’s British Open while those events were majors. Only Karrie Webb has won five different LPGA majors (Kraft Nabisco Championship, Women’s PGA Championship, du Maurier Classic, U.S. Women’s Open and the Women’s British Open). Winning five major championships during a career is called the Super Career Grand Slam.
Park has won six of the last 14 major championships (beginning in 2013). Eight other players have captured the other tournaments.
Other than her 2012 victory, Park has not fared so well in The Evian. She has only one other top-10 finish (a T10 last year) and is a combined 17-under in seven career starts. That includes a 17-under finish in her winning year.
In contrast to Park, defending champion Hyo Joo Kim has ruled at The Evian Championship. In two career starts, she has a T4 (as a 17-year-old amateur in 2012) and won. She has never been out of the top eight after any round. Her first-round 61 last year established a new 18-hole low for a major for both women and men. Here are the low scores in majors:

Women
Score	Player	Tournament	Round
61 (-10)	Hyo Joo Kim	2014 Evian Championship	First
62 (-10)	Minea Blomqvist	2004 Weetabix Women’s British Open	Third
62 (-10)	Lorena Ochoa	2006 Kraft Nabisco Championship	First
63 (-9)	Patty Sheehan	1984 LPGA Championship	Third
63 (-9)	Mary Beth Zimmerman	1997 Nabisco Dinah Shore	Final
63 (-8)	Helen Alfredsson	1994 U.S. Women’s Open	First
63 (-8)	Meg Mallon	1999 McDonald’s LPGA Championship	Third
Men
There have been 27 63s shot in men’s majors, including a high of 13 in the PGA Championship and two in the Masters.

This event may offer the best chance for No. 2-ranked Lydia Ko to score her first major championship title, based solely on her career record. The Evian Championship is the only major where she has two top-10 finishes (second as an amateur in 2013 and T8 last year). In 2013, when the event was reduced to 54 holes because of rain, Ko finished second – her best finish in a major – two strokes behind Suzann Pettersen. Ko has a T3 in the Ricoh Women’s British Open this year and a third in the 2014 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship but has not finished in the top 10 in the ANA Inspiration (best finish of T25 in 2013) and U.S. Women’s Open (best finish of T12 this year).
French connection: There are six French women in this week’s field, led by Solheim Cup team members Karine Icher and Gwladys Nocera. Joanna Klatten, who leads the LPGA in Driving Distance (274.4-yard average); Celine Boutier, the Women’s British Amateur champion and a senior at Duke; and sponsor exemptions Mathilda Cappeliez, 17, and Agathe Laisne, 16. Cappeliez was a semifinalist in the U.S. Women’s Amateur (she lost to eventual winner Hannah O’Sullivan, who is also in this week’s field) and has trained at the Annika Academy near Orlando, Fla. Both Cappeliez and Laisne are on the European team for next week’s Ping Junior Solheim Cup (Sept. 14-15) that precedes the Solheim Cup. Cappeliez’s family lived at the eighth hole of The Evian Resort Golf Club, the site of this week’s Evian Championship. French golfers swept the British Amateurs this year – Boutier for the women and Romain Langasque for the men. On a side note, the last European to win a major came here in 2013 when Suzann Pettersen of Norway won.

Evian Resort Golf Club

Be prepared for a low-scoring tournament this week in the French Alps. The Evian Resort Golf Club has rendered double-figure winning scores for seven consecutive years – most notably Inbee Park’s 17-under winning total in 2012. Every winner since 2008 has posted at least two rounds in the 60s and rounds of 61, 63 and 64 have been recorded during that time span.

The par-71 course will play 6,453 yards and features five par-3s on the par 35-36 layout. The signature hole is the 440-yard, par-4 18th hole, where the green is guarded front and right by a pond.

Etc.

Get ready for some morning golf this week from The Evian Championship. Golf Channel will show the first two rounds Thursday and Friday from 5-8 a.m. (EDT) and 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. The third round on Saturday will air from 6:30-11:30 a.m. on Golf Channel. The final round will split between Golf Channel (8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.) and NBC (12:30-2 p.m.). … All 24 players for the American and European Solheim Cup teams are in this week’s field. … The first-round pairing that will draw the most attention: No. 1 Inbee Park, No. 2 Lydia Ko and No. 3 Stacy Lewis. … Keep an eye on the top 62 in the Race to the CME Globe competition. With The Evian Championship being the final full-field event of the season, only the top 62 – at worst – will make the upcoming tournaments in the Asian Swing. Entering this week, Japan’s Haru Nomura holds a 57-point lead over England’s Charley Hull for the 62nd spot.

Stats and Stuff: Park at center stage in search for ‘Super’ Evian win

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