| Cavalleri, Ochoa headline Corona Championship field
Rolex Rankings' number one Lorena Ochoa and defending champion Silvia Cavalleri highlight the field when the LPGA Tour arrives in Mexico for the Corona Championship this week. Ochoa, who captured her second major championship and 20th-career LPGA victory last week at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, returns to her native Mexico with three wins in four events played this season.
A crowd favorite no matter what country she is playing in, Ochoa won the event in 2006 and finished tied for second in Morelia last year, two strokes behind Cavalleri. This week, she will look to win her third consecutive LPGA Tour event—a feat she most recently accomplished in 2007.
Cavalleri, a native of Italy, stole the show from the then-recently-crowned world number one Ochoa last year by carding four consecutive rounds in the 60s (69-68-69-66=272, -20). She began the final round in a three-way tie with Ochoa and Paraguay's Julieta Granada atop the leaderboard, but a 7-under-par 66 on the par-73 course at Tres Marias Residential Golf Club in the final round made her the season's third Rolex First-Time Winner.
The 6,539-yard course will play host to the $1.3 million Corona Championship for the fourth consecutive year. Carin Koch, the event's inaugural champion in 2005, is also in the field. |