Ahead of this weekend’s top tour players hitting the fairway in New Jersey for the 2026 Mizuho Americas Open, LPGA icon Michelle Wie West and fellow athletes, U.S. player Gina Kim, and Italian golfer, Benedetta Moresco, made their way to Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital to visit patients.
The players spent time earlier this week signing squishy golf balls, and fist-bumping with patients and their families as they talked about the sport they have come to the Garden State to play. The Mizuho Americas Open features a unique field combining 120 top LPGA Tour players competing alongside 24 elite junior golfers from the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA). The Open, which features a $3.25 million purse, this year moves from Liberty National to the Mountain Ridge Country Club in West Caldwell, New Jersey.
This year’s tournament features an HMH Birdie Challenge. For every birdie on one of the par 3 holes this week, a donation will be made on behalf of Hackensack Meridian Health’s Foundation’s Tackle Kids Cancer (TKC) initiative.
Hackensack Meridian Health is celebrating the tenth anniversary of Tackle Kids Cancer, its pediatric cancer initiative which to date has raised more than $26 million since its inception to support patients and their families throughout New Jersey and beyond.
The program raises funds in support of research, treatment options and patient care programs for the organization’s two children’s hospitals: Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital located at Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, NJ, and K. Hovananian Children’s Hospital, located at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center, in Neptune, NJ.
