By Matt Smith
Leading Ladies European Tour stars Maja Stark and Linn Grant are preparing for their debuts at the Amundi Evian Championship this week, knowing victory will not only put them in the driver’s seat for the season-long Race to Costa del Sol rankings and make them $1 million richer, it will also earn them major champion status.

The Swedish rookies Stark and Grant, ranked first and second on the LET Race respectively, are looking to add to a sensational first season on tour with a maiden major trophy at Evian Resort Club in France, while the Race itself is nip-and-tuck. Victory at the Evian is worth 675 points on the Race to Costa del Sol Rankings and there are only 292 points separating the pair. Fellow Swede Johanna Gustavsson is also in the mix as she has a mathematical chance of leapfrogging Stark with a win.

All three Swedes played in the Jabra Ladies Open at Evian Resort in late May, on the same golf course, albeit on a different set-up.

Linn Grant

Stark, who has won the Women’s New South Wales Open and the Amundi German Masters so far this year, said: “I’m excited about playing in a tournament again. I haven’t really thought about it as a different competition to any of the other LET events. It’s a bigger, stronger field, but I’ve played at the course before.

“I’ve had a good season and I’m always expecting the best from myself, hopefully being up there in contention and hoping that it’s enough, this week. I’m always aiming for the win. I haven’t been training a bunch at home on this week off, I just felt like I needed the time off to re-set my brain a bit. I’ve only practised when I felt like it and I think it’s been good for me.

“The shots are there and I know what to work on and what happens when I’m not hitting the ball very well. Last week was more about sustaining what I have and not practising anything new.

“The Jabra Ladies Open went well but I think the course is slightly different. It feels a bit longer than it was at the Jabra and the greens are softer now than they were then. The rough is a bit longer but for sure it’s nice to have played it before because it’s a very tricky course, both strategically and just knowing where to hit around the greens. In some places, you can end up with an almost impossible shot if you’re not careful, so it’s really good to have been here before and to have started to figure the course out and it’s nice that it was pretty recent that we played here.”

Grant, who has won the Joburg Ladies Open, the Belgian Ladies Open and the Scandinavian Mixed, where she became the first female winner on the DP World Tour in the co-sanctioned event with the LET, is also aiming high.

“I’m really looking forward to this week and the course looks amazing,” she said. “I’m super excited about going to test my game against the very best.

“I’ve only played in the British and US Opens, so it will be my first time at the Evian, which I am very excited about.

“I do have high expectations. I’ve played all right in the majors before and I like the major feeling. Courses are longer and tougher. The greens are faster so you need to have more patience with your game and I think that suits me, so I pretty much expect to play well.

This year’s field of 132 players includes past champions such as world No. 2 Minjee Lee (2021), No.1 Jin-Young Ko (2019); Angela Stanford (2018), Anna Nordqvist (2017), In Gee Chun (2016), Lydia Ko (2015) and Hyo Joo Kim (2014), as well as world No. 3 Nelly Korda and No. 5 Atthaya Thitikul.

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