Inbee Park seeks career Grand Slam at Evian Championship

As they should be, all eyes are on Inbee Park at the Evian Championship – the fifth and final Major championship of the season on the women's professional circuit – as the remarkable South Korean seeks to achieve a career Grand Slam by claiming this title on the course near the French Alps.

Yet a glimpse into the future is also provided by invites to the world's three leading amateurs, headed by number one ranked Leona Maguire. The 20-year-old Co Cavan player – an undergraduate at Duke University in the USA where she dominated collegiate golf last season – makes her debut in the championship, grouped in the first round with Spain's Belen Mozo and the Czech Republic's Klara Spilkova.

Maguire, who won the Mark McCormack award for finishing the season as the world amateur number one and who also received the Anika Sorenstam award for being the leading college player this year, is making her debut in the Evian Championship which is confined to 120 players but which includes all the world's top players and also features the Europe and USA teams that contest next week's Solheim Cup in Germany.

In her only previous outing on the Ladies European Tour this season Maguire finished runner-up to American Beth Allen in the European Masters.

Centre of attention

Park, though, is the centre of attention as she sets about seeking to claim the Evian. She won this tournament back in 2012 but at that stage it was not a Major – it was only elevated to that status by the LPGA Tour the following year so Park will be attempting to complete the career Grand Slam of five Majors in France.

She has already won two Majors this season, last month’s Ricoh British Women’s Open and the LPGA Championship in June.

In fact Park has won six of the last 14 Majors on the women’s circuit, and of her ability to step up for the really big championships, she said: “I feel like I have 100 per cent concentration when I play the major championships. It really feels like a real golf tournament.”