Friday, November 6, 2009

Futures Tour Q-School Round 4: Joh and Mills Achieve Escape Velocity

Tiffany Joh and Danielle Mills are locked in a duel for medalist honors at the Futures Tour Q-School. With 1 more round left to play on the Lake Region course, they're knotted at -13, 6 shots ahead of their nearest competitors.

[Note: B=Bridgewater, H=Huntington Hills, L=Lake Region, R=Ridgewood Lakes]

T1/-13 Tiffany Joh (67L-69R-72B-67H), Danielle Mills (67R-71B-69H-68L)
T2/-7 Mallory Blackwelder (71R-74B-66H-70L), Laura Kueny (68R-70B-70H-73L)
T5/-6 Jodi Ewart (69B-73H-73L-67R), Laura Bavaird (71R-69B-71H-73L)
7th/-5 Stephanie Connelly (69L-70R-73B-71H)
8th/-3 Nannette Hill (72R-70B-72H-71L)
T9/-2 Jane Rah (74B-70H-71L-71R), Kitty Hwang (70R-72B-71H-73L)

T11/-1 Rebecca Flood (69B-72H-70L-76R)
T15/E Leanne Bowditch (73B-67H-74L-74R), Lauren Doughtie (71B-73H-69L-75R), Chelsea Curtis (68B-71H-70L-79R)
T24/+3 Miriam Nagl (76L-73R-70B-72H)
T33/+5 Mariajo Uribe (71H-76L-68R-78B)
T53/+8 Virada Nirapathpongporn (73H-75L-77R-71B), Michelle Yang (71H-68L-75R-82B)

Nice move up the leaderboard, Oui! The LET's Nagl has done a good job staying calm after a disappointing start, too. Both players get to have their revenge on the Lake Region today. Watch out for them and Uribe to move sharply up the leaderboard.

The rest of the field won't be playing Friday, although they'll get low status memberships on the Futures Tour in 2010 if they want them.

+15 Kelly Nakashima (78B-77H-72L-76R)
+17 Maiya Tanaka (73B-77H-75L-80R), Cindy Miller (74H-74L-76R-81B)
+18 Rebecca Kim (74H-75L-79R-78B)
+19 Eri Miyake (77L-79R-78B-73H)
+21 Mallory Hetzel (77B-78H-78L-76R), Woori Shin (75L-76R-82B-76H)
+23 Elena Kurokawa (77H-79L-79R-76B), Kathryn O'Rourke (79R-78B-78H-76L)
+29 Mariko Makabe (76H-82L-81R-78B)
+38 Jillian Fraccola (76L-83R-84B-83H)
+41 Paula Pearson-Tucker (86B-77H-83L-83R)
+48 Yukiko Ishizaka (86R-81B-83H-86L)

So there you have it. Only 1 NYer will be playing regularly on the FT next season and nobody of obvious Japanese descent (although it took most of this season for me to realize that Samantha Richdale is part-Japanese, so I'm going to leave that qualifier in there for now).

[Update 1 (4:40 pm): Nice Beth Ann Baldry profile of Mallory, Myra, and Worth Blackwelder.]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Geez Con - I had no idea you were a New Yawk-o-centric like that. (by the way - did you notice the 4 Georgians in the "see you on the DFT next year" area ?) :-D

Is it important that there are Japanese girls on the DFT ? How many Americans are playing in the JLPGA (do they have a DFT equivalent in Japan ?) Q-school ?

The Constructivist said...

Yah, I'm a homer, which helps explains why I couldn't root against the Yankees (plus: Matsui!). Actually, Cindy Miller lives in the town next door and has a son who's trying the professional golf route himself. She's played all kinds of professional golf in her career, so it would have been nice to see her get higher status.

In the greater scheme of things, it doesn't really matter much where the FT players come from, but as I'm tracking the overall competitiveness of Japanese women's golf (and of Japanese Americans/Canadians/etc.), it matters to me.

The JLPGA has a Step-Up Tour, but I haven't bothered trying to figure out how foreigners join. Going by JLPGA Q-School scores, it seems to me any top FT player who keeps her head should have no trouble qualifying for the JLPGA itself. Baldry touches briefly in the article I just linked to on why Blackwelder is seeing the FT as a more viable backup option than the JLPGA, btw!