Saturday, July 19, 2008

State Farm Classic Saturday: Hee-Won Han Making a Big Move

There's something about Mostly Harmless. Right after I proclaimed that Inbee Park had been passed by several members of her rookie class, she went on a tear and capped it off with an impressive win at the U.S. Women's Open. Earlier this morning, I didn't even mention Hee-Won Han as one of the players with good odds of going low this weekend and putting herself into contention at the State Farm Classic. So of course she's -9 through her 1st 11 holes, having birdied 3 in a row to start her round, 4 in a row in the middle of the back, and 2 in a row to kick off the front. She's climbed all the way to -13, already in solo 4th, only 3 shots behind leader Ya Ni Tseng. Wow!

[Update 1 (2:15 pm): Well, Han "only" birdied 2 of her last 7 for a tournament-record 61 and a total of -15. But Tseng (-17 through 15), Michelle Wie (-18 through 14), and Katie Futcher (-16 through 16) have boarded birdie trains of their own today, putting some distance between themselves and the other 20 players double digits under par. Wow!!]

[Update 2 (3:18 pm): Han's 61 sticks out like Creamer's 60 did last week. There were only 2 players who came within 5 shots of her--unfortunately for her, 1 is the leader Ya Ni Tseng (I don't expect Katie Futcher to be a factor on the back 9 tomorrow, but take that with a grain of salt, as very little has gone as I expected it would today). Michelle Wie would have been another but she bogeyed the last hole to fall 1 behind Tseng (there were only 2 other 67s on the day, by rookie Anna Grzebien and Meredith Duncan). Looks like the wayback machine is working on the LPGA as well as the PGA this week--those 2 duelled as amateurs years ago, in the Public Links, as I recall (Tseng won). 68s helped you out a bit today, but with so many 69s and 70s among those in the middle of the pack, they didn't help you out all that much. Sure, Stacy Prammanasudh passed Christina Kim, but they're nowhere near the top of the leaderboard like I thought they would be. More when LPGA.com unfreezes....]

[Update 3 (3:48 pm): Hold the presses! Michelle Wie was DQed for failing to sign her scorecard in the right place after the 2nd round. Golfweek has the story. Yeesh.]

[Update 4 (4:54 pm): Here's Hound Dog's 3rd-round recap, which can help you reconstruct Wie's round--which LPGA.com disappeared (along with the 2nd) from its web site--along with all the other action at the top of the leaderboard.]

[Update 5 (5:02 pm): The rules are the rules, but like Mulligan Stu I'm sad for Wie and the tour. And angry that neither Wie nor her caddie nor the tournament officials caught this while she was still in the scorer's tent yesterday.]

[Update 6 (7/20/08, 8:54 am): Wow, here's a great definition of dramatic irony. Read the interviews with Tseng and Han and consider what you know that they don't know. Ouch. It helps, though, that they were pretty low-key about Wie in the 1st place.]

[Update 7 (7/21/08, 4:26 am): For the record, here's the transcript from the DQ press conference.]

[Update 8 (4:27 pm): New golf blogger (and PGA scoring official) Casey Jones's 1st post from May on scorecards and their necessity is quite apropros.]

[Update 9 (7/22/08, 11:44 am): Have to give Ron Sirak some credit for getting the DQ story right.]

[Update 10> (7/23/08, 11:45 pm): Geoff Shackelford posts the official LPGA party line on the DQ, which makes sense to me.]

2 comments:

Average Golfer said...

Wie's not the first, nor will she be the last to take the gas pipe for a bad scorecard. Hopefully what she takes from this is that after 3 rounds she was just one behind one of the world's best.

The Constructivist said...

Oh, I hope she takes a lot more from this. Like the need to pay attention to what matters when it matters. Was she being rushed to the media tent? Doesn't matter. The ONLY things you need to do in that tent are make sure your scorecard is correct, sign it, and turn it in (besides helping your playing partner whose scores you've kept do the same thing).

She's going to be in contention a lot in her career, so she needs to get used to dealing with the distractions that come with success.