Tranquil Evian Setting Evokes Heart-Pounding Drama

It started as a party, a really good one with expensive champagne and fireworks over Lake Geneva every night. Almost three decades ago, 29 years to be exact, Franck Riboud, the former chairman of Danone and a member of the board of directors of Renault and the Consumer Goods Forum, decided to bring a golf tournament to his resort on the hillside above the village of Evian-les-Bains, France.

For the first six years, it was a Ladies European Tour event called The Evian Masters, a hopping good time where the pro-am came after the event, not before, and winners included the likes of Helen Alfredsson (twice), Dame Laura Davies (twice, back-to-back) and Catrin Nilsmark.

Then in 2000, the LPGA joined the party, co-sanctioning the event between the two tours. Purses went up, which meant that player participation in the post-round festivities – which remained exquisite – dwindled a little, as preparation took priority. Winners included Annika Sorenstam (twice), Alfredsson (for a third time), Karrie Webb, Paula Creamer, Natalie Gulbis, Ai Miyazato, Jiyai Shin and Inbee Park among others.

That’s when Riboud knew he was onto something. With Geneva an easy commute around the lake and the train station in the village known for its Alps-fed spring water connecting the resort to the rest of France (it’s a 3-hour ride from Paris through the mountains in one of the most scenic commutes in all of Europe), the event now called the Amundi Evian Championship had all the trappings of a major, even before it received the official designation.

All that was needed was a facelift to the golf course. Carved out of the side of the steep mountain, the resort course is a challenge to play and maintain. Water runs downhill, picking up speed as it goes, so when the rain, sleet and snows settle in, the landscape takes a beating.

By 1922, another 9 holes had been added, but no one considered the resort suitable for a championship for many more years. The course underwent numerous renovations between 1988 and 2013, the last and most extensive coming at the hands of Dave Sampson and Jeremy Slessor. Those were the guys who designed Celtic Manor in Wales, the site of the 2010 Ryder Cup. The routing remained mostly intact, but all the greens, tees, bunkers and water features were remodeled and holes 5, 15, 16, 17 and 18 were completely redesigned to add more drama. Now, the reachable par-5 15th is a place where you can see every number from eagle 3 to quintuple bogey 10. That’s followed by the par-3 16th where a perfect distance and direction are required to avoid double bogey or worse.

The dogleg right par-4 17th has seen plenty of birdies, and the par-5 18th has had players make eagle to win and double bogey to lose.

Once the renovations were complete, Riboud substantially increased the purse, and the Amundi Evian Championship officially became women’s golf’s fifth major.

Lydia Ko stayed neck and neck with Pettersen that Sunday. It wasn’t until the final green when Pettersen held a two-shot lead that the Norwegian Solheim Cup stalwart was able to drink in the beautiful surroundings and shake her head in wonder at the teenager playing by her side.

Riboud kept a few of the elements of the old days in place. Dinners at the Hôtel Royal were amazing, and the fireworks continued apace. Throw in a private concert on the hotel lawn at least one night of the week – it was not uncommon to run into people like Sly Stone in the buffet line – and the Evian Championship quickly earned a reputation as the most opulent event in golf.

In 2013, Pettersen waited on the final green as the trophy came down from the sky, delivered by a skydiver draped in the red-and-white cross flag of Norway, another touch found nowhere else in the game.

In Gee Chun, who burst into the American consciousness by winning the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club, captured her second major at the Evian Resort in 2016, and in so doing, set an all-time scoring record for majors at 21-under for the week.

Those numbers sparked another round of criticism as the golf course played soft and slow in September.

The next year was the final straw. Once again, the 2017 Amundi Evian Championship had to be shortened to 54 holes, this time with parts of the first round completely canceled after play began and the weather moved in. Then, late on Sunday, Anna Nordqvist won her second career major championship in a playoff over Brittany Altomare in the midst of a sleet storm with marble-sized chunks of ice peppering the 18th green.

After that, then LPGA commissioner Mike Whan announced that 2018 would be the final Evian held in September. Future championships would be played in the summer and anchor a European swing for the LPGA Tour.

Angela Stanford sent the fall version of the Amundi Evian Championship out with a bang. Trailing late, Stanford made an extraordinary run and then watched Amy Olson make a six at the last to lose by a single shot. It was Stanford’s lone major title in a two-decade career, and an unforgettable sendoff to a fall date as the trophy and American flag came down from a gorgeous, cloudless sky.

Jin Young Ko solidified her spot as the No.1 player in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings when she won the 2018 Amundi Evian Championship by two shots over Hyo Joo Kim, Shanshan Feng and Jennifer Kupcho.

Then, in 2019, the moment everyone in the women’s game had expected finally arrived. Australian Minjee Lee, one of the most talented young players in women’s golf history, finally broke through to become a major champion. Lee shot 64 on Sunday and then had to wait an hour to see if Jeongeun Lee6 would hold a lead she carried through much of the week. When Lee6 missed a putt that would have won it on 18, the two went back on the par-5 for a playoff which Minjee ultimately won.

This year’s drama is bound to be just as compelling. With a field full of major champions and Rolex First-Time Winners, including Rose Zhang, Lilia Vu, U.S. Women’s Open champion Allisen Corpuz and the LPGA Tour’s most recent stroke-play champion Linn Grant vying for a major title, “The Source” will be anything but tranquil as the Amundi Evian Championship gets underway on Thursday.