Absent Stars, Windy Test Confront LPGA Event

As LPGA tournaments go, the $750,000 L.A. Women’s Championship at Wood Ranch Golf Club in Simi Valley promises to be both less and more than advertised.

Forget the billboards featuring Annika Sorenstam. She didn’t turn in her application in time.

Don’t look for last year’s top two money-winners, Karrie Webb and Juli Inkster. They are absent too.

But Se Ri Pak is playing for the first time since ducking out without signing her scorecard a round short of finishing the Office Depot tournament in West Palm Beach, Fla., a month ago.

Hall of Famer Patty Sheehan is here, however reluctantly, after an 11-month hiatus spent caring for her terminally ill father and rediscovering her lifelong identity as a homebody.

Dottie Pepper has recovered from an auto accident in December that caused whiplash. The nagging wrist injury that bothered her the last few months of 1999 is better too.

And the course, known to members as “Wind Ranch,” will introduce itself as a seductive yet capricious beauty, the kind whose nature changes with, well, the breeze.

The 54-hole tournament has a new home, after three stormy years at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale. Its sponsor, Group Dynamics Inc., settled on Wood Ranch, which hasn’t had a major professional tournament since 1988, when the second of two Senior PGA Tour events was held.

The seniors never broke par and never returned.

Tournament officials insist the course is easier now. The fairways are wider, the rough is less dense, the undulating greens hold better. And, according to meteorological studies, February is less windy than March, when the senior events were held.

Although the chance of rain apparently is greater.

Pick your poison. Golfers battled a strong wind during the pro-am Wednesday, then braved a steady drizzle during the pro-am Thursday.

The course, like a disputed play in the NFL, is under review. Players and officials will offer feedback after the tournament and help determine whether Wood Ranch will be more than a one-year wonder.

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The Facts

* What: L.A. Women’s Championship.

* Where: Wood Ranch Golf Club, Simi Valley.

* When: Today-Sunday.

* TV: The Golf Channel (today-Sunday, 1:30 p.m.)