Local families host LPGA golfers - WSFA.com: News Weather and Sports for Montgomery, AL.

Many golfers will hit the green as championships play continues today in Prattville for the Navistar LPGA Classic.  The top female golfers in the world are competing for 1.3 million dollars in cash prizes and the 2012 title.

Some of the golfers in town for the tournament choose to stay in hotels.  Others stay with families who volunteer to open their homes to one or more of these professional golfers. Many times, the hosts become like family to the golfer and it becomes a home away from home during the tournament, sometimes year after year.

Dinner time in the Vandervoort home is a time of good food, laughing and relaxing miles away form the pressures of a championship golf tournament. 

"The hospitality has been great with Peter and Sarah.  We come home to a home rather than a hotel with just your room." Jennie Lee

For LPGA golfers Jennie Lee and Il Hee Lee, the Vandervoort's home in east Montgomery is their home for the next few days.  The family is hosting these two and it's their sixth year to open up their home to golfers during the Navistar LPGA Golf Classic.

"It's truly a pleasure to have the best lady golfers in the world stay in our community and in our home.  It gives them a great place to rest, relax and be able to focus on their job and focus on the game and their skills when they're out here to play," Sarah and Peter Vandervoort explain.  " We get to talk to them about the experiences that they have in playing some of the best courses in the world, playing courses internationally, the people that they get to see, what they see.  They show pictures at times."

It's a one of a kind experience for the host family, no doubt.  But for these ladies, it means more than a bed to sleep in.

Jennie Lee says, "it's great for us, you know, especially being on the road for extended weeks at a time, it's really nice for us to have the opportunity." 

"And you feel more like home.  Everything is more relaxed.  At the hotels sometimes you are just there in a room and that's it.  But here you get to interact with other people and I think it's much better.  I like it."

Maria Hernandez, another LPGA golfer stayed with Peter and Sarah two years ago.  This year she is staying with a friend of theirs, but the Vandervoorts asked her back to their home for dinner.

"When you go to families like this, at the end they are kind of like your family here, so it's very nice to see them again year after year."

The golfers say they will never forget the hospitality shown to them by the families.  It's a friendship they say that will last a lifetime.

The Vandervoorts say that "it also gives us some people that we actually go out there and we cheer for.  So we've got some familiarity with ones on a more personalized basis so we can get out there, cheer for them as they're going, follow them around as they play the course."

Sarah Vandervoort is Korean, so she has a special connection with Korean golfers staying with her.  She is also an accomplished golfer in her own right, here in Montgomery.  The holds the City Golfing Championship title two years running, in addition to other golf titles.

The golfers say its great to be able to share the home of a family who also appreciates the game of golf.

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