Her Third-place Finish At Mizuno Classic Lifts Her Into The Lead In Global Group Points And Makes Her The 17th Player To Qualify For Season-ending ADT Championship
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 6, 2006 – Brittany Lang’s play has been solid and steady in 2006, and thanks to her performance during a hot stretch in October and November, she will be one of 32 players competing for a $1-million winner’s check at the ADT Championship.
Lang finished tied for third Sunday at the Mizuno Classic, good enough to loft her into the top spot in Global Group points and earn her an automatic berth in the ADT Championship.
Lang tied for sixth at the Honda LPGA Thailand 2006, followed that up with a 25th-place tie at the KOLON-Hana Bank Championship and then wrapped up the Global Group events with a 68-69-70—207 third-place tie at the Mizuno Classic that vaulted her into the top spot. She finished with 34 Global Group points, three ahead of Gloria Park.
The ADT Championship will be played Nov. 16-19 at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Fla. The event will serve as the championship event for the LPGA Playoffs 2006- the first-ever playoff system in golf- and award its winner $1 million, the largest prize in the history of women’s golf.
The 11th annual ADT Championship will feature 32 of the top female golfers in the world. This will be the sixth consecutive year the exclusive club has hosted this prestigious concluding event to the LPGA season. Annika Sorenstam is the reigning champion, owning four ADT Championship titles and three of the past four.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, and a graduate of Duke University, Lang hasn’t won an LPGA event this season, but she has finished in the top 10 eight times. She joins an illustrious field for the ADT Championship that already includes Sherri Steinhauer, Sorenstam, Se Ri Pak, Karrie Webb and Brittany Lincicome – all of whom have won either majors or Winner Events – as well as first-half ADT Points qualifiers Lorena Ochoa, Mi Hyun Kim, Cristie Kerr, Juli Inkster, Seon Hwa Lee, Hee-Won Han, Jeong Jang, Paula Creamer, Natalie Gulbis, Pat Hurst and Meena Lee.
Fifteen more players will qualify before the ADT Championship tees off on Nov. 16. The winner of this week’s event, The Mitchell Company LPGA Tournament of Champions presented by Kathy Ireland Worldwide, will earn an automatic berth. Twelve other players will qualify via their standings in the second-half ADT Points race, and two wild cards not otherwise qualified will be chosen based on their position on the Oct. 15 ADT Official Money List.
With one tournament to play before the ADT Championship, players are scrambling to lock up the 12 spots awarded to the second-half ADT Points leaders. Stacy Prammanasudh leads the race with 125 points, followed by Morgan Pressel (122), Julieta Granada (108), Jee Young Lee (108), Il Mi Chung (98), Sophie Gustafson (87), Sun Young Yoo (72), Maria Hjorth (71), Diana D’Alessio (66), Lorie Kane (64), Candie Kung (60), Angela Stanford (60) and Wendy Ward (60).
The ADT Championship will be played in the following format (a sudden-death playoff will be used at the end of each round in the event of a tie): the first cut will be after 36 holes to 16 players; the second cut will be after 54 holes to eight players (scores are cumulative through 54 holes). The final round will be played in four groups of two, with all players starting with a fresh scorecard. Whoever shoots the lowest score in the final round will win the ADT Championship and $1 million.
About ADT
Celebrating its 131st anniversary, ADT Security Services, a unit of Tyco Fire & Security, is the largest provider of electronic security services to more than six million commercial, government and residential customers throughout North America. ADT’s total security solutions include intrusion, fire protection, closed circuit television, access control, critical condition monitoring, electronic article surveillance, radio frequency identification (RFID) and integrated systems.
About IMG and IMG Media
IMG is the world’s premier Sports, Entertainment and Media Company. IMG is a diversified global business with two major business segments: IMG Sports & Entertainment, and IMG Media. IMG employs over 2,300 people in 30 countries. Forstmann Little & Co. purchased IMG in 2004.
IMG Sports & Entertainment includes: consulting services; event ownership and management; fashion events and models representation; licensing; golf course design; client representation in golf, tennis, broadcasting, European football, rugby, cricket, motorsports, coaching, Olympic sports and action sports. In addition, IMG Academies are the world’s largest and most advanced, state-of-the-art, multi-sport training and educational facility, delivering world-class sports training experiences to over 12,000 junior, collegiate, adult and professional athletes each year.
IMG Media, which includes our content production subsidiaries TWI and Darlow Smithson Productions, is recognized as a global leader in the delivery of traditional and new media content and services, with Internet, broadband and mobile expertise, transforming how audiences access and interact with content. IMG Media produces and distributes over 9,000 hours of sports, documentary, docu-drama, entertainment, and popular factual content annually, over multiple platforms across 200 countries, including award-winning television and radio programming. It also represents the broadcast rights to many of the world’s premier sporting events and has the world’s biggest sports archive with more than 200,000 hours of footage.
More information about IMG is available at www.imgworld.com and www.darlowsmithson.com.
About the Ladies Professional Golf Association
Featuring the world’s best women golfers, the LPGA’s membership includes touring, teaching and club professionals. The LPGA Tour in 2006 features 36 events, with total prize money of nearly $52 million. Since 1981, the LPGA and its tournaments have raised approximately $170 million for charity. From the dreams of its 13 founders in 1950, the LPGA has evolved into the world’s pre-eminent women’s professional sports organization. The LPGA has grown from its roots as a playing tour into a non-profit organization involved in every facet of golf. In addition to the LPGA Tour members, the LPGA membership includes nearly 1,200 certified Teaching and Club Professionals (T&CP) who serve the golf industry in teaching, coaching and management positions. The LPGA T&CP member programs focus on increasing the involvement of women, girls and youth in golf, as well as contribute to the growth of the sport overall. The LPGA is headquartered in Daytona Beach, Fla. For more information on the LPGA, log on to www.LPGA.com.
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