SUPERSTITION MOUNTAIN, Ariz. — The LPGA is back in Arizona. It’s also back at one of its most popular stops.
Perhaps it’s fitting that the golf club hosting the event is owned by a woman, and the company hired to run concessions during the tournament is also woman-owned.
All that wasn’t done by design but it does speak to a convergence of events that puts women at the forefront of the LPGA’s first full-field event on the 2023 schedule.
The Drive On Championship will be held at Superstition Mountain Golf Club, March 23-26. It’s the fourth event of the season but the first three were limited field tournaments.
Top-ranked Lydia Ko and Minjee Lee aren’t in the field but the best of the rest are going to play, as Nos. 2, 3 and 4 – Nelly Korda, Jin Young Ko and Atthaya Thitikul – are set to tee it up, as are Lexi Thompson, Brooke Henderson, Lilia Vu, Danielle Kang and Jennifer Kupcho.
“It’s going to be a star-studded field,” said Scott Wood, the 2023 tournament director. Six of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20-ranked golfers in the world are in the field of 144.
Old stomping grounds
Arizona golf fans will remember Superstition Mountain.
It hosted the Safeway International for five years, from 2004 to 2008. Those events are remembered for the three World Golf Hall of Famers who won there: Annika Sorenstam in 2004 and 2005; Juli Inkster in 2006; Lorena Ochoa in 2007 and 2008.
The location was a hit for fans, as well, with more than 150,000 spectators roaming the galleries those weeks.
Lorena Ochoa pitches to the 18th green as fans look on during the third round of the 2008 Safeway International at Superstition Mountain Golf & Country Club in Superstition Mountain, Arizona. (Photo: Scott Halleran/Getty Images)
The LPGA returned to the Grand Canyon State with the Founders Cup in 2011. That event was last staged in Arizona in 2019 when Jin Young Ko won her first tournament in the U.S. at the Bank of Hope Founders Cup at Wildfire Golf Club. The 2020 event was canceled by the COVID pandemic and then the tournament was moved out of the state.
In the ensuing years, Susan Hladky, owner of Superstition Mountain, and her general manager Mark Gurnow started working behind the scenes to bring professional golf back to their corner of the world.
One of their first efforts was to try to attract the KPMG Women’s PGA. They aimed high right off the bat, swinging for the fences to land a major. While that didn’t pan out, it did help get them in front of some…
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