Sunday, April 6, 2008

Kraft Nabisco Championship Sunday: Crunch Time Pairings

For moving day, the Kraft Nabisco Championship organizers spread the field in twosomes over the late morning and early afternoon, but for the final round the players are going off both sides in threesomes in the early-to-late morning slots. Interesting switch--kind of equalizes playing conditions a bit for everyone. All eyes will be on the final groups:

Start Time: 8:45 AM
Karen Stupples
Mi Hyun Kim
Brittany Lang

Start Time: 8:56 AM
Diana D'Alessio
Se Ri Pak
Natalie Gulbis

Start Time: 9:07 AM
Annika Sorenstam
Karrie Webb
Na Yeon Choi

Start Time: 9:18 AM
Liselotte Neumann
Heather Young
Suzann Pettersen

Start Time: 9:29 AM
Seon Hwa Lee
Maria Hjorth
Inbee Park

Start Time: 9:40 AM
Lorena Ochoa
Hee-Won Han
Cristie Kerr


But also of interest for me will be the Paula Creamer/Ya Ni Tseng (8:34 am), Ai Miyazato/Jee Young Lee (8:01 am), and Jeong Jang/Shi Hyun Ahn (7:39 am) matchups off the front, not to mention the matchups of H.J. Choi/Morgan Pressel (7:39 am), Ji-Yai Shin/Shiho Ohyama (7:50 am), Sakura Yokomine/Angela Park (8:01 am), Hee Young Park/Meena Lee (8:12 am), Candie Kung/Momoko Ueda (8:35 am), and Moira Dunn/Pat Hurst (8:56 am) going off the 10th tee.

The races within the race I'll be following include low Young Gun (right now it's between Seon Hwa Lee, Inbee Park, Na Yeon Choi, and Ya Ni Tseng) and low nihonjin (Ai-chan has a 1-shot lead on Ohyama, 2 on Yokomine, and 3 on Ueda), but like everyone else I'll be waiting and hoping for the winner. In order of preference, I want

1. Hee-Won Han to shed the "best player without a major" label and become one of a handful of moms to win on tour;
2. Seon Hwa Lee to finally get the recognition a Rookie of the Year award, 2 wins, and match-play dominance have not yet gotten her;
3. Inbee Park to make the first win for the Class of '07 a major and prove me wrong in my latest Young Guns ranking and pre-season prediction;
4. Lorena Ochoa to overcome her history at Mission Hills and add to the legend;
5. Se Ri Pak for a historic comeback;
6. Mi Hyun Kim to shed the "best player without a major" label and accelerate her post-knee surgery comeback;
7. Annika Sorenstam to overcome illness and add to the legend.

But I'd settle for finally doing decently in this week's Pakpicker!

[Update: Mulligan Stu explains the logic behind the tee times (hint: tee-vee).]

2 comments:

Hound Dog said...

The groupings change is because of CBS - to finish the event by 3pm local time.

All of those possible scenarios point out how intreguing this final round could turn out to be. #4 is the most likely but something tells me #2 is going to sneak up on us.

The Constructivist said...

If it weren't for that damn triple....