Se Ri Pak
Defending champion and LPGA and World Golf Halls of Fame member Se Ri Pak will headline a star-packed field this week for the Avnet LPGA Classic at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, Magnolia Grove, Crossings Course. Last year, Pak defeated Brittany Lincicome and Suzann Petterson in a playoff to take the 2010 Bell Micro Championship, which was rain-shortened to 54 holes.
A total of 144 players, including nine of the top-10 in the Rolex Rankings, will compete for a purse of $1.3 million this week. Rolex Rankings No. 1 Yani Tseng will look to continue her strong hold on the world's top spot. Tseng won the season-opening Honda LPGA Thailand and finished second in the Kraft Nabisco Championship last month, the season's first major. But she has plenty of challengers in the field this week who are looking for their first victory of the 2011 season including Rolex Rankings No. 3 Cristie Kerr, No. 4 Na Yeon Choi, and No. 5 Suzann Petterson.
Stacy Lewis, who became a Rolex First-Time Winner and a major champion by taking a three-stroke victory over Tseng in last month's Kraft Nabisco Championship, will be in the field. Lewis is looking to join Karrie Webb as the second back-to-back winner on Tour this year. Webb captured back-to-back wins at the HSBC Women's Champions in Singapore and the RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup.
Also among this year's field for the Avent LPGA Classic is 16-year-old Alexis Thompson, who received one of two sponsor's exemptions. It will be Thompson's first LPGA event in 2011.
This week's Avent LPGA Classic will be the third edition of this tournament in Mobile. The first two years of the event were called the Bell Micro Championship but Avnet, a global technology distributor, acquired Bell Micro in 2010. Angela Stanford won the inaugural Bell Micro Championship in 2008 and she will be in the field again this week. After a year hiatus in 2009, the event returned to Magnolia Grove in 2010 when Pak took the title.
While this particular event has only been held two other times, the Crossings Course played host to the Tournament of Champions from 1999-2007. Players in the field this week who won that event are Paula Creamer, Christina Kim, Dorothy Delasin, Webb and Pak.
