Fubine, Italy, June 1: Tvesa Malik who is still seeking her first Top-10 finish of 2022 on the Ladies European Tour is all set for the 54-hole 26th edition of the Ladies Italian Open at the Margara Golf Club in Fubine. The field of 126 players includes five Indians, and has players from 28 countries.
Tvesa Malik, has a best of T-26 at the Aramco Series-Bangkok individual event and last week she was T-45 at Jabra Ladies Open. In 2021, Tvesa had a series of Top-10s and Top-15 finishes and also came close to her maiden title with a second place in Belgium. She finished 19th in the Order of Merit.
The other Indians in the field this week includes Vani Kapoor, who has played in South Africa, Australia, Thailand and Europe this week, as she seeks to establish herself. The three others are Amandeep Drall, Ridhima Dilawari and Neha Tripathi.
Last year’s tournament was played behind closed doors due to Covid-19 and the winner was the French player Lucie Malchirand, in a region which has with a great golfing tradition, and where the Molinari brothers were born and raised.
Malchirand will be joined by strong names including Lee-Anne Pace and Caroline Hedwall. Malchirand will try to become the first player, since Laura Davies (1987-1988), to win the tournament back-to-back.
Six of the current ten best players on the Race to Costa del Sol will also be in the field – Johanna Gustavsson from Sweden (ranked second), Tiia Koivisto from Finland (ranked fifth, who won last week’s Jabra Ladies Open) , the South African Lee-Anne Pace (sixth), Englishwoman Meghan MacLaren (eighth), Spain’s Ana Pelaez (ninth and who recently won the Comunidad de Madrid Ladies Open), Scotland’s Michele Thomson (10th).
They will be joined by Spain’s Carmen Alonso and Nuria Iturrioz, England’s Alice Hewson, Gabriella Cowley, Annabel Dimmock and Lily May Humphreys and Finland’s Ursula Wikstrom (runner up in 2021), as well as Sweden’s Caroline Hedwall and Linnea Strom.
