Evian Champions from Helen Alfredsson to Anna Nordqvist

The Evian Championship at the Evian Resort Golf Club in Evian-les-Bains, France. (Photo by Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)

Evian champions from 2000- 2017 have shaped and dominated the women’s game.

The Evian is a unique event on the annual women’s golf schedule. It’s difficult to imagine a more beautiful setting for a major golf championship than the French Alps! And I can’t envision a sporting event other than golf that could move easily between its Scottish links birthplace and an Alpine terrain.

Évian-les-bains is a favorite among the players, and for very good reason. It’s generally regarded as the best resort town in France, a short train ride from Paris, yet a world apart from the jangle of the 21st Century. Evian is steeped in 19th century nostalgia and fueled by a 21st century party atmosphere.

Nestled in the midst of it all, the Evian Resort Golf Club annually hosts the only major championship staged in Continental Europe on a golf course that opened for play in 1904.

Over the years the original nine-hole resort course was expanded to 18, renovated and remodeled several times, and gradually moulded into the championship track that it is today. Fairways that wind through Alpine valleys have been reworked. Greens nestled impossibly into mountainsides have been expanded, and bunkers strategically repositioned, while retaining the à la française signature that makes Evian a unique golf experience.

It’s not surprising that the Europeans first took women’s golf to the Evian. From 1994-2000 the Ladies European Tour staged the Evian Masters at the resort. It was a period dominated by Laura Davies and Helen Alfredsson, although Annika Sörenstam was emerging as a critical figure on the women’s stage as well.

In 2000 the LPGA partnered with the LET and began to co-sanction the Evian Masters. And beginning in 2013 the event was elevated to the Evian Championship, one of two majors on the LET schedule and one of five on the LPGA schedule.

Whether Evian Masters or Evian Championship, however, the winners of the Alpine competition on the Evian track have delivered outstanding golf on one of the game’s most challenging tracks. As a group the Evian Champions have shaped the direction of modern golf and dominated the contemporary women’s game.

Let’s take a look back at the event’s champions.