Friday, December 5, 2008

2008 Pinx Cup Preview

Wow, the Korean and Japanese teams are loaded for the 2008 Pinx Cup!

Even without Shiho Oyama, who's contending at the LPGA's Q-School this weekend, Team Japan is fielding the strongest squad in its history, including 5 of the top 10 players on the JLPGA in 2008:

#2 Sakura Yokomine
#3 Yuri Fudoh
#4 Miho Koga
#6 Momoko Ueda
#8 Akiko Fukushima
#11 Yuko Mitsuka
#15 Shinobu Moromizato
#16 Erina Hara
#17 Hiromi Mogi
#18 Ayako Uehara
#19 Akane Iijima
#28 Hiroko Yamaguchi
#29 Maiko Wakabayashi

Wonder why #20 Mayu Hattori wasn't given a shot over Yamaguchi, who stumbled badly at the end of the JLPGA's season. And where is #7 Ai Miyazato? Team Japan could certainly use her, given how strong Team Korea is, what with its highly-ranked LPGA stars joining the top KLPGA (minus Sun-Ju Ahn, who it appears just WDed from LPGA's Q-School) and JLPGA players this weekend:

[#3 LPGA]/#5 JLPGA Ji-Yai Shin
#8 LPGA Seon Hwa Lee
#9 LPGA Na Yeon Choi
#12 LPGA Jeong Jang
#13 LPGA Inbee Park
#14 LPGA Eun-Hee Ji
#15 LPGA Hee-Won Han
#1 JLPGA Ji-Hee Lee
#9 JLPGA Mi-Jeong Jeon
#12 JLPGA Hyun-Ju Shin
Hee Kyung Seo
Ha-Neul Kim
So-Yeon Ryu

The KLPGA site lists last year's results as a tie, but Japan definitely won in a playoff. Team Japan is much less of an underdog this year than last, but without Ai-chan I'd still say they are not the favorites, particularly with the event being played on Team Korea's home turf.

Probably the best place to follow the action is at Seoul Sisters.com. If the KLPGA can get their act together, they might have some live scoring on their site. Check it out if you want to be reminded that there's more to women's golf than Michelle Wie!

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