Australia will start as the number No. 4 seeds for the UL International Crown women`s team event to be held at the Merit Club just outside Chicago next month.
Karrie Webb, Minjee Lee, Su Oh and Rebecca Artis will represent their country in the eight-team event, which is an official event on the US LPGA Tour. The event is being played from 21-24 July at the Merit Club where 16 years ago Webb won the US Women’s Open.
The Australians vaulted over Chinese Taipei when the teams and line-ups were finalised yesterday, mostly due to Su Oh’s impressive 8th place finish last week at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
The 20-year-old Oh, who on the back of her finish last week has raced to No. 40 in the Rolex Women’s World Rankings is delighted to be playing in the event for the first time.
\"I can`t wait to be part of the team,`` she said. \"It`ll just be the highlight of my career, I think, since we rarely get to the opportunity to play with a team. To represent Australia and to play in a team with Minjee and Karrie will be great.``
This year will be the second staging of the biennial International Crown event, worth $US1.6 million. In 2014 the the inaugural event was won by a buoyant Spanish team, with the Australian team of Webb, Lee, Katherine Kirk and Lindsey Wright finishing in eighth place.
South Korea will be the obvious favourite in 2016 with four players all ranked in the top 10 in the world -- Inbee Park, Sei Young Kim, In Gee Chun and Amy Yang.
The eight qualified countries were seeded #1 through #8 and divided into two pools based on the cumulative team score of the four players’ Rolex World Ranking. Each country will play two, four-ball matches between each of the other three countries in their pool (Thursday - Saturday). The top two point-earning countries from each pool and one wild card country will advance to play in Sunday’s single matches. Two points will be awarded per match (two for a win and one for a halve). The total cumulative points from Thursday - Sunday will determine the champion.
Players from the winning team receive US$100,000 each in prizemoney.