England’s Laura Davies headlines the €200,000 Finnair Masters at Helsinki Golf Club this week and is aiming for back-to-back wins after her dramatic victory last week in Norway.
Davies, the current European no.1, visits Finland for the first time in her career in the second edition of the 54-hole Finnish tournament, but will play the course blind when she tees up on Friday.
“I’m looking forward to it. It’s not the greatest preparation because I’ve got a few things to do so I won’t be seeing the course before we play on Friday,” she said. “But I really wanted to play in the tournament and that’s the only way I could do it. It will be an interesting week because of poor preparation but that’s my fault not anyone else’s.”
Davies is aiming for her 68th victory and her ultimate goal is to claim the Ladies’ European Tour’s 2006 New Star Money List for the seventh time since 1985. She currently leads by 35,000 euros over France’s Gwladys Nocera, who has won three tournaments this season.
Finland is the last of the Nordic countries in which Davies has yet to claim a victory after previous wins in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Following her win last week, she also leads the Tour’s Volvo Cross Country Challenge order of merit for which she could earn a car and 30,000 US dollars.
This week, she will be challenged by the local favourite Minea Blomqvist of Finland who returns to play on the park land course from her rookie season on the US LPGA Tour.
Blomqvist, who won in Hungary in her first year on the LET and was the Ryder Cup Wales Rookie of the Year in 2004, has had a frustrating start to her LPGA career. She has made eight cuts in 15 starts with her best finish a tie for 24th in the Franklin American Mortgage Championship.
The Finn has been struggling to find consistency in her swing in recent weeks but has spent two days working with coaches Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott in Sweden and believes that the hard work will pay off.
“I’ve been swinging badly lately and it has been very frustrating so I decided to come back from America a week early to practice with my coaches ahead of this tournament,” she said.
“Now I feel like my routine is back and I am keen to put in a good performance on home soil and give Laura Davies a run for her money.”
Denmark’s Lisa Holm Sorensen defends this week’s Finnair Masters and will be joined by this year’s winners Nocera, Rebecca Hudson, Lynn Brooky, Linda Wessberg, Stephanie Arricau and Finland’s Riikka Hakkarainen.
The Finnair Masters is the third of four events in The Volvo Cross Country Challenge: a separate ranking for events in the Nordic Region.
In addition to this week’s prize money, there is an extra purse of US $120,000 on offer to the top ten players on the final Volvo XC Challenge order of merit.
Davies leads with 380 points. She will also play in the final event next week in Denmark, making her a likely winner.
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