Star-studded field at Blythefield
Defending champion Lexi Thompson, world number one Lydia Ko and newly-crowned major champion Brooke Henderson will all feature at this weekend's LPGA Classic for Simply Give.
Thompson carded a six-under-par 65 in the final round at Blythefield Country Club last year to reach a score of 18-under, a stroke ahead of Solheim Cup teammates Lizette Salas and Gerina Piller.
The victory was Thompson's fifth on the LPGA Tour and her first in 15 months.
Since then, the blonde bombshell has won twice more on the LPGA Tour and will return to Michigan for the second time this month for this weekend's tournament.
At this week's $2-million event, the 21-year-old defending champion will be joined by a host of in-form players, including Henderson, who got the better of Ko in a playoff at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship last week.
Ko, meanwhile, is already a two-time winner this year and would certainly like to add more silverware to her ever-growing trophy cabinet.
Joining the above-mentioned trio in the field are other winners on Tour this season – Haru Nomura, Hyo Joo Kim, Sei Young Kim, Minjee Lee, Jenny Shin, Ariya Jutanugarn and Anna Nordqvist.
In fact, each winner on the LPGA Tour is in the draw of this week's event at the par-71, 6,414-yard course in Grand Rapids, where plenty of birdies are expected.
Meanwhile, Salas and Piller will also be looking to go one better this time around, while the likes of Brittany Lincicome, Na Yeon Choi, In Gee Chun, Shanshan Feng, Suzann Pettersen and Amy Yang will all fancy their chances too.
LPGA Classic for Simply Give, benefits the Meijer’s Simply Give programme, which is involved in sponsoring various food pantries in the Midwest of the USA.
The 2014 event raised more than $600,000, and the 2015 Meijer LPGA Classic generated $750,000 for the programme.
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