Go, Go, Sarah Oh--Again!

Just like last weekend, it's shaping up to be another Sarah Oh-Katherine Hull showdown on the ALPG, this time in the final round of the inaugural New Zealand Women's Open. Hull had a 3-shot advantage after the 1st round, thanks to a smashing 65, but Oh responded with her 2nd-stright 68 today to open up a 2-shot lead of her own. Kiwi-centric tv highlights aren't focusing on that story, of course; the NZ media is too busy rooting for the home team. But with the ALPG site down due to heavy traffic, there's not much else to pass along right now, besides this recent profile of Oh. More later!

[Update 1 (5:25 pm): OK, the ALPG site is back. Here's their round 2 game story. Oh actually had a 67, not a 68, as originally reported. Hull bogeyed 17 and 18 to drop 3 back. Here are the results after 36 holes. You'll note that the LET's Nocera, the KLPGA's Park, and the LPGA's Kemp are also within 5 shots of Oh, and such relatively big names as Wendy Doolan and Martina Eberl are not too far behind, while the LPGA's Mollie Fankhauser and Sarah-Jane Smith (formerly Kenyon) and LET's Lotta Wahlin and Yuki Sakurai are. But at least they're doing better than worldwide young guns Sunny Park, Kiran Matharu, Anne-Lise Caudal, and Stephanie Na, not to mention LPGAers Laura Davies, Beth Bader, and Diana D'Alessio. If you have the time and the interest this Super Bowl weekend, you can follow the live scoring from your home later tonight!]

[Update 2 (2/1/09, 12:37 pm): Too bad! Oh blew up with an 80 to fall back to T6 at -1 with Mollie Fankhauser, while Katherine Hull's 76 dropped her into a T2 with Nikki Garrett, Sarah Kemp, and Bo Bea Park at -2, 6 shots behind Gwladys Nocera, who won going away with a 69. Yuki Sakurai ended up T14 with Cecelia Cho, the low New Zealander at age 14.]

[Update 3 (2/2/09, 1:43 am: Liz Smith has more on how Nocera stayed calm in the wind while Hull struggled with her putter and Oh lost her composure.]

Soggy SunCoast Series Results

It's all snow all the time here, but I still have about an ounce of sympathy left for the LPGA and Futures Tour golfers who had a long wet slot last week in the SunCoast Ladies Series. Meredith Duncan caught Briana Vega at -5 in the second round and both were declared co-winners when the final round was cancelled due to heavy rain, denying Johanna Mundy her chance for her 3rd straight win. Looks like I should have added Mundy to my list of sleepers and wild cards heading into the '09 LPGA season. Moira Dunn, who I did put on my list, tied Mundy for 3rd at -3, beating M.J. Hur and Taylor Leon (E, T8), Hannah Yun (+1, T14), Jeehae Lee (+2, 16th), and Stacy Lewis (+4, T19), among many others. It's great to see that Moira's sharp already; when they update their current money list, she should be in the top 5. Lewis, meanwhile, who went 70-78, still has plenty of time to scrape the rust off her game before she begins her 1st full LPGA season. Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for her.

2009 LPGA Preview: Other Predictions

There's still time to join in the LPGA Prognostication Derby! If you're looking to find out what other people are thinking, check out the following sites.

hubdub.com asks 3 questions:

Who will top the 2009 LPGA money list?
Where will Michelle Wie finish on the 2009 LPGA money list?
Will Michelle Wie win a LPGA tour event in 2009?

easyodds.com compiles the betting lines on the 2009 LPGA money list leader race.

GolfWRX.com has a discussion thread on the Rookie of the Year race. MyLPGA.com has one on the Player of the Year race.

The easiest ways to post your top 30 predictions for 2009 are to do a fanshot or fanpost over at Hound Dog LPGA or list them over at the Seoul Sisters.com discussion board. Good luck!

2009 LPGA Preview: Mostly Harmless Sleepers and Wild Cards

Having essentially extended my projected LPGA top 30 to a top 50 the last 2 posts, I still believe there are more players with a chance to crack the top 30 in 2009. Here's my list of top sleepers and wild cards for 2009 (excluding players who are expecting like Maria Hjorth, Catriona Matthew, Mhairi McKay, and Gloria Park):

1. Anja Monke: one of the hottest players in the world at the very end of the '08 season; can she sustain her momentum in '09?
2. Sarah Lee: great in '07, hurt in '08...back in '09?
3. Sandra Gal: had better stats than results in her rookie season...is she due for a super sophomore campaign?
4. Juli Inkster: can the Hall of Famer close out her fantastic career with a successful stretch run heading into her last Solheim Cup?
5. Laura Davies: does she have those last 2 LPGA wins in her? or could she get into the LPGA Hall of Fame the quick way, with a win in a major?
6. Pat Hurst: why not a repeat of her million-dollar '06 season in '09?
7. Young Kim: has the swing to contend any week...
8. Shi Hyun Ahn: always plays a limited schedule, but if she keeps putting as well as she has...
9. Kyeong Bae: a birdie machine her 1st 2 seasons; was '08 a blip?
10. Giulia Sergas: one of the best Euros on tour...poised for a quantum leap in '09?
11. Alena Sharp: she's got some up-and-coming competition for best Canadian on tour--how will she respond?
12. H.J. Choi: a real fighter...
13. Grace Park: wouldn't you love to see her come back in '09 from her back troubles? [Update (9:36 am): The rumor mill is cranking on her pre-season preparations over at Seoul Sisters.com!]
14. Rachel Hetherington: another great player from earlier in the decade who's struggled in recent years...end of the line or time for a comeback?
15. Carin Koch: another one of the elite from a few years back and another mom on tour who showed signs of her former greatness in '08.
16. Helen Alfredsson: speaking of comebacks, as long as her back stays healthy, why shouldn't she continue her brilliant (if rather inconsistent) play and remain one of the toughest closers on tour in '09?
17. Mika Miyazato: wouldn't it be cool for the other Miyazato from Okinawa to have a great 1st season as a pro and validate her skipping the JLPGA, unlike most of her cohort of up-and-coming Japanese stars?
18. M.J. Hur: her only problem was closing strong on Sundays in '08 on the Futures Tour; would love to be the Angela Park of the rookie class....
19. Mindy Kim: won 3x on the FT in '08, so could surprise in '09 in the big leagues...
20. Brittany Lincicome: reached depths in '08 few golf writers (or bloggers, for that matter) would have believed at the end of '07; why not a comeback in '09?
21. Jennifer Rosales: her official story is that injuries have hurt her game the last several years; fighting for her card in '09....
22. Aree Song: she's been fighting a serious illness the last couple of years--it would be awesome to see her come back!
23. Louise Stahle: the former LET rookie of the year has full playing privileges on the LPGA in '09--is she finally ready for prime time?
24. Na On Min: fantastic '07 with limited starts, but struggled in '08...
25. Reilley Rankin: always seems to be threatening to break through, but still hasn't quite yet....
26. Birdie Kim: showed some signs of life in '08; aims to avoid "Korean Hilary Lunke" tag....
27. Ashleigh Simon: will she finally come into her own in '09, now that she has full LPGA playing privileges?
28. Charlotte Mayorkas: is she ready to break through in '09?
29. Moira Dunn: I'm hoping my childhood friend will keep her card for '10!
30. Anna Rawson: come on--you would have been watching for her, even if I didn't put her on this list, right? it'll be interesting to see how her 1st full year on the LPGA turns out....

2009 LPGA Preview: The Mostly Harmless Not-Quite-Top 30

Here's who it hurt the most to leave out of my top 30 in the LPGA Prognostication Derby:

1. Stacy Prammanasudh
2. Karen Stupples
3. Katherine Hull
4. Laura Diaz
5. Inbee Park
6. Vicky Hurst
7. Meena Lee
8. Hee Young Park
9. Ji Young Oh
10. Sun Young Yoo
11. Allison Fouch
12. Natalie Gulbis
13. Nicole Castrale
14. Kristy McPherson
15. Teresa Lu
16. Lindsey Wright
17. Sophie Gustafson
18. Se Ri Pak
19. Minea Blomqvist
20. Louise Friberg

I wouldn't be at all surprised if more than half these players finished in the top 30. I expect the gap between the #30 and #50 player on the money list to continue to narrow in 2009.

2009 LPGA Preview: The Mostly Harmless Top 30

One year ago today, I posted a ranked list of who I thought had the best chance to become the LPGA Player of the Year in 2008. Having done only all right then, I'm giving it another try and joining Mulligan Stu, Hound Dog, and Bill Jempty today. Anyone else want in on the LPGA Prognostication Derby? There's still time!

1. Lorena Ochoa
2. Paula Creamer
3. Ji-Yai Shin
4. Seon Hwa Lee
5. Ya Ni Tseng
6. Suzann Pettersen
7. Na Yeon Choi
8. Jee Young Lee
9. Cristie Kerr
10. Amy Yang
11. In-Kyung Kim
12. Morgan Pressel
13. Mi Hyun Kim
14. Eun-Hee Ji
15. Jeong Jang
16. Ai Miyazato
17. Angela Park
18. Jane Park
19. Hee-Won Han
20. Stacy Lewis
21. Karrie Webb
22. Song-Hee Kim
23. Momoko Ueda
24. Christina Kim
25. Angela Stanford
26. Brittany Lang
27. Shanshan Feng
28. Shiho Oyama
29. Candie Kung
30. Michelle Wie

Tomorrow: Those it hurt me the most to leave off this list.

Best Blogs on Women's Golf: Seoul Sisters

I can't tell you how excited I am that Happy Fan, founder of the Seoul Sisters web site, magazine, and discussion board, has begun blogging at Seoul Sisters. Eric is the English-speaking authority on the KLPGA and has closely followed the Se Ri Pak effect on the LPGA for most of this decade. With all due respect to the other top bloggers on women's golf that I'll be discussing over the next several weeks, I'm ranking him right after Hound Dog based on his blog's promise from the record he had built up over the years, not to mention his first 3 days of posting. Over those 10 posts detailing his rationales for his 2008 awards, Eric has topped most every recap of last season that I've seen.

Want the definitive profile of Ji-Yai Shin, his 2008 Player of the Year? Let's just say he outdid his capsule bio of her and easily matched his best previous articles on her.

How about a thoughtful critique of the LPGA's language policy? There's a lot the LPGA could learn from in that post. And the one joining me in blasting the singling out of Eun-Hee Ji's post-victory verbal performance as the catalyst for the now-rescinded policy, too.

Want to know who will be starring on the KLPGA after Ji-Yai Shin's departure? You should--expect Hee Kyung Seo, He Yong Choi, and So Yeon Ryu to play outside Korea more often in coming years and do quite well.

Want to know more about LPGA rookies not named Wie, Lewis, Shin, Oyama, or Hurst? If M.J. Hur or Mindy Kim exceed expectations in '09, Eric will have played amateur Nostradamus successfully for the 2nd year in a row.

There's more there and more to come. Here's hoping Eric decides to participate in the LPGA Prognostication Derby this season, pays close attention to the fantastic Korean players on the JLPGA, continues to look globally for up-and-coming talent of Korean descent, and throws in a few posts on Seoul Brothers Anthony Kim and Danny Lee over the course of the year.

Lessons from Last Week around the World of Women's Golf

Many top women golfers aren't waiting for February to kick off their 2009 season. Whether in Australia, Brazil, or Florida, we got early peeks this past week at who's already ready to handle heat, rain, wind, and the other vicissitudes of competitive golf, well before the LPGA season begins. Among the LPGA regulars this season, it appears that Paula Creamer, Katherine Hull, Kristy McPherson, M.J. Hur, Laura Davies, Mollie Fankhauser, and Sarah Kemp are already pretty sharp, even if none of them could manage to get a win.

20-year-old Sarah Oh was the hometown favorite in New South Wales and she didn't disappoint, coming through for the biggest victory of her fledgling career by holding off Hull in the Women's NSW Open. As Liz Smith reports, another player's caddy asserted that Oh deserved penalties for seeking advice from her dad and improving her stance in a bunker, but the rules officials disagreed, so Oh's 3-stroke victory held. Others getting top 10s included Davies, Fankhauser, and Kemp. For the full results, you can download the spreadsheet off the Women's Golf New Zealand web page--a final-round 78 dropped Nocera out of contention, while her LET cohorts never really got much of anything going and Stephanie Na and Sunny Park settled for T45s.

Meanwhile, in Rio, as the LPGA has announced, Hound Dog has covered, and Jay Busbee has praised, Catriona Matthew will go down in history as the first champion of the inaugural HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup. Not only was Matthew the only one in the 15-player field to break 70, she did it twice in a row--a feat made even more impressive by the fact that she's 5 months pregnant and hadn't touched a club for a month leading up to the exhibition. That $100K winner's check will sure help make her 2009 a lot more pleasant, not least because she plans to play only 1 more tournament before taking a maternity leave from the LPGA. McPherson was the only other player under par for the tournament, so gets her season off on the right foot. Louise Friberg and Leta Lindley can take solace in the fact they bounced back from terrible opening rounds on Sunday. Everyone else got a good sense of just how much rust they have to scrape off in the next several weeks, ranging from a little (Angela Park, Laura Diaz, Allison Fouch) to a lot (Eun-Hee Ji, Christina Kim, Karen Stupples).

Last but not least, Creamer competed with several other LPGAers on the SunCoast Ladies Series at Forest Lake GC this past weekend. Of them, only Hur was really sharp, but still not sharp enough on Sunday to hold off the LET's Johanna Mundy (formerly Head), who got her 2nd win of 2009 on that tour by chasing her down. Creamer had to settle for a tie for 5th, after a pair of closing 71s weren't enough to make up for an opening 75 in terrible weather.

Starting tomorrow, Stacy Lewis is the big name in the SunCoast Series field, joining Mundy, Hur, and Moira Dunn--who played college golf in Florida--along with Hannah Yun, Jeehae Lee, and a number of other players you can expect to see on the LPGA, the Futures Tour, or both in '09. We'll see if more fans turn out after Dave Andrews criticized the lack of publicity for the 1st 2 events.

Later this week, the ALPG's New Zealand Women's Zealand Open kicks off. I haven't found a field list on their site, but the tournament organizers have announced that Hull, Davies, and the LET's 2008 money list leader Gwladys Nocera will be in it. Peter Thorley profiles one of the top amateur New Zealanders in the field, if you're looking for local talent to root for. For more on the event and the course, check out Liz Smith's post. Assuming Anna Rawson isn't in the field, maybe she can find a nice hat to wear on the LPGA this season by checking out the photos from 1908 that the local library has made available!

Mostly Harmless Synergy: Gackt Interviewed Miho Koga

Yes, you read that right. Gackt interviewed Miho Koga. It's not as surreal as I expected it to be--nor as fiery--but the transcript of their dialogue is an MH must-link.

Go, Go, Sarah Oh!

How cool would it be if Sarah Oh were able to hold off Katherine Hull, Gwladys Nocera, Laura Davies, and others in the final round of the Women's NSW Open today? As Liz White reports, Oh has a 4-shot lead on her nearest competitor (Hull) after following up her course-record 65 (matched by Nikki Garrett that day) with a 67. (For the full field's scores, check out The Daily Telegraph's game story.)

Why would a win on the ALPG be such redemption for Oh? Well, she inadvertently found herself in the middle of a controversy at LPGA Q-School, when the LPGA made 2 mistakes: holding a playoff for the last Category 11 spots in the tour's 2009 priority status list at all, and holding it among the players at T21 instead of at T25. Oh, a 2008 LPGA rookie, played just badly enough on the last day of Q-School to put herself in a position where the playoff needed to be at T25 for her to have a chance at Category 20 status. So she has no LPGA status in 2009. I'm waiting to see whether she has Futures Tour status; the Australian media leads me to believe she does, but I'm waiting for confirmation from the FT itself. In any case, I'm rooting for Oh to finish out the ALPG season in style and move up their Order of Merit. If she can start a winning streak this week and keep it going, she could even qualify for the HSBC Women's Champions event in early March--and if she wins that, she can apply for LPGA membership and play most any event she wants this season.

First things first, though. I'm hoping she nails down this win today.

Momoko Ueda's Prospects in 2009

Having looked at my favorite golfer's prospects for the coming season last Saturday, I figured it would be fun to check out Momoko Ueda, the first of what may turn out to be many of her fellow countrywomen to follow her to the LPGA. Ueda's rookie season was nothing to write home about, even if she did finish it 3rd in her class and 13th in her generation.

In fact, Ueda earned more in her 13 JLPGA starts than she did in her 19 LPGA starts in 2008. Like Miyazato in 2006, Ueda won twice on the JLPGA in her rookie season, but the fact is that the rookie Miyazato outdid her in every other measure. Miyazato earned $532.1K in 21 starts (including 7 top 10s) against Ueda's $413.6K in 2 fewer starts (including 3 top 10s) on the LPGA; on the JLPGA, it was ￥58.60M for Miyazato in 7 starts against Ueda's ￥54.62M in 13. Miyazato also scored better than Ueda: 71.22 vs. 71.74 on the LPGA and 70.63 vs. 71.28 on the JLPGA. Ueda wasn't nearly as proficient on the greens as Miyazato was in her rookie season, either; Ueda was consistently near 3.19 birdies per round and 1.825 putts per green in regulation on both tours, while Miyazato was at 3.71 and 1.78 on the LPGA and even better in PPGIR on the JLPGA, at 1.728 (I still haven't been able to locate her JLPGA birdie rate in 2006). Although Ueda was slightly longer than Miyazato (by about 3 yards), Miyazato was much more accurate off the tee and with her approach shots. Where Ueda could only manage to hit 62% of her fairways and 63.6% of her greens in regulation, Miyazato was fantastic, at 75.3% and 69.3%.

Those last stats are the key to Ueda's 2009, in my opinion. I'm not so worried about her putting--she averaged 1.78 PPGIR and 3.47 birdies per round on the JLPGA in 2007, when she won 5 times--so she knows how to get the ball in the hole and perform under pressure. The challenge will be getting better at ballstriking and course management this season. If she can become just a little bit more accurate off the tee, she could end up in Hound Dog's top 20 for total driving rather than #71, as she was in 2008, and thereby increase the odds of hitting more than 2/3 of her greens in regulation and giving herself more--and better--birdie chances. Ballstriking is what really what separated Na Yeon Choi's 2008 from Ueda's (where Ya Ni Tseng outdid both of them was in total putting). There's no reason that Ueda can't be in their league in all these categories this coming season.

Like Miyazato, Ueda will need to get off to a fast start in 2009, given the temptations of relatively easier money on the JLPGA and the gaps in the LPGA schedule for those ineligible to compete in the Solheim Cup. But I'm going to be stubborn and put her, too, back in my top 30 for 2009 next week. I expect her sophomore season to be much better than her rookie one.

LPGAers Competing Down Under at Women's NSW Open

There are a good number of LPGA regulars competing in Australia at the Women's New South Wales Open this weekend, along with the ones competing in Brazil. In today's round, Laura Davies and Wendy Doolan are playing with the JLPGA's Nikki Campbell, Sarah Kemp and Mollie Fankhauser with the LET's Marianne Skarpnord, and Katherine Hull with the LET's Nikki Garrett and amateur Julia Boland. In addition, Sarah Oh, Stephanie Na, and Sunny Park (familiar names from LPGA and LET Q-Schools) will be trying to jumpstart their careers down under (Oh will be playing with '08 LET money list leader Gwladys Nocera). Worth a look to see what kind of games they're all bringing to the '09 season.

HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup Preview/Pairings/Predictions

What better place for an LPGA exhibition than Rio? The 36-hole HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup kicks off the 2009 LPGA preseason tomorrow. I'd love to see a showdown between Angela Park and Eun-Hee Ji, the top 2 players in the Class of 2007, in their 1st appearance as Junior Mints.

But each threesome is interesting. Veterans Jill McGill, Leta Lindley, and Catriona Matthew start things off, followed by Young Guns Allison Fouch, Kristy McPherson, and Louise Friberg. Brazilian amateur Patricia Carvalho gets to measure her game against the likes of Ji and Karen Stupples, while struggling Brazilian professional Candy Hannemann gets to measure hers against Jimin Kang and Christina Kim. The final trio consists of Angela Park, Laura Diaz, and Carin Koch. I'm curious to see if Matthew and Kang can get '09 started right after a disappointing '08s, if Koch can get a career jumpstart a la Lindley in '08, how prepared Kim and Diaz are for their Solheim Cup runs the 1st half of this season, and whether Fouch, McPherson, and Friberg are ready to break through after solid campaigns last season.

I wouldn't put too much weight on bad or indifferent starts for anyone, but we'll get a pretty good sense of who's already pretty sharp if we see any really good rounds this weekend. With the LET's ANZ Ladies Masters only a couple of weeks away, it's never too soon to start putting up some low numbers. Here's my sense of who'll be best prepared for this week, taking into account the numbers of moms with families likely tagging along and the pressures on the 3 Brazilians unofficially hosting the unofficial event:

1. Ji
2. Fouch
3. Kim
4. Park
5. Stupples
6. Diaz
7. McPherson
8. Friberg
9. Matthew
10. Koch

I agree with Jason Sobel that it would have been nice if more of the top LPGA stars had chosen to play here, but as long as this event remains an exhibition, it's going to be hard to draw more than a few of them a year. My suggestion would be to get HSBC to make this the new site for their Women's World Match Play Championship (on hiatus since 2007). What better place to enjoy yourself if you get bounced in the 1st round than Rio? And what better way to kick off the LPGA season than with a showdown between the previous year's top-ranked players?

Whatever the future holds for this event, be sure to follow the LPGA Insider's on-site reports this weekend!

Who Has More Upside, Fujikawa or Ishikawa?

Yes, this is going to be a post on men's golf.

I couldn't help but notice the American golfy media going nuts over Tadd Fujikawa's performance in the Sony Open last week. Monday qualifying with a 67 and shooting the best round of the tournament on Saturday, a 62, will do that to anyone. It kind of reminded me of the Japanese media's treatment of Ryo Ishikawa, except that Ishikawa's already won twice on the Japan Tour and made over 100 million yen in his rookie season last year.

As Dave Seanor recently pointed out, Fujikawa more than doubled his career earnings last week, despite his disappointing final round, but still has made less than $50K. Last May, Ann Miller noted how much more backing Ishikawa is getting. So it's clear that Ishikawa is well ahead of Fujikawa at this very early point in their careers. But where will they end up? Here are two yutube clips to help you decide!

Tadd:



Ryo:



[Update 1 (1:18 pm): Hmm, maybe Arnold Palmer agrees with me!]

[Update 2 (10:16 pm): Mostly Harmless talks, Augusta listens? Or coincidence?]

[Update 3 (1/24/09, 11:39 pm): Brent Kelley totals up the PGA events Ryo will be playing in the coming months over at About.com's golf blog.]

[Update 4 (1/29/09, 4:55 am): Ron Sirak weighs in with some cautionary tales for Ryo.]

LPGA Prognostication Derby Blues

So I've been thinking off and on lately about how to improve on my 3rd-place finish in the competition to identify 2008's best 30 golfers on the LPGA. For 2009, it seems to me I'm doing all right if I get 10 picks about right, 10 a bit off, and 10 wildly off. It's pretty rare for an acknowledged top 10 player to fall all the way out of the top 30, so I'm not too worried about the 1st two of those challenges. But how to minimize that last number? Well, I have to figure out how to approach the following problems:

• Schedule Speculation. Not that many golfers are as decisive--or transparent--about their 2009 schedules as Lorena Ochoa. It's an open question, for instance, how many JLPGA starts Ji-Yai Shin, Momoko Ueda, Ai Miyazato, and Shiho Oyama will make this coming season. Team Wie is spreading the word not to expect her to make more than 14 LPGA starts in her rookie season on the LPGA. How to factor in known or suspected limited schedules among the top/up-and-coming players on tour?
  
• Hot Streak or Quantum Leap? When you look at the LPGA's 2008 Performance Chart, it's clear that Shanshan Feng, Sun Young Yoo, Laura Diaz, Ji Young Oh, Karen Stupples, Brittany Lang, Katherine Hull, and Angela Stanford joined Lorena Ochoa, Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer, Cristie Kerr, Suzann Pettersen, Jeong Jang, Seon Hwa Lee, Na Yeon Choi, In-Kyung Kim, Hee-Won Han, Jee Young Lee, and Meena Lee in finishing last season off in style. The 1st group of names are those who surprised me by doing this, while the 2nd group either stayed at or played up to my preseason expectations. That's 19 players right there (minus Sorenstam) who are fantastic top 30 candidates for 2009. But who among them (aside from the usual suspects) have really made a quantum leap? And how many are due to cool off or go cold?
  
• Bounceback Time: Whether it's from injury, swing changes, or life-changing events (like death in the family, getting engaged or married, or having a baby), a significant portion of the candidates for the top 30 will have some serious bouncing back to do in 2009. Who will be as successful at coming back from an injury as Helen Alfredsson or Candie Kung were last season? I expect a youngster like Ya Ni Tseng to come back fully healed from her triceps injury, but are Natalie Gulbis's back problems and Jeong Jang's wrist problems as chronic and serious as, say, Grace Park's have been? Will Han, Stupples, and Catriona Matthew prove as adept at infant/toddler wrangling and elite golfing as Juli Inkster and Pat Hurst? How will engagement affect Ochoa's game and marriage Mi Hyun Kim's? Will Morgan Pressel finally groove her new swing?
  
• Blip or Trend? Will a healthy Alfredsson remain among the game's elite for the next few years, or was 2008 her swan song? Has Se Ri Pak put her worst season since 2005 behind her? Have we seen the last of Inkster, Laura Davies, Sherri Steinhauer, Hurst, Carin Koch, and Rachel Hetherington in the top 30? And what about other players who have fallen on hard times lately like Grace Park, Gloria Park, Jennifer Rosales, and Dorothy Delasin? And how about players in their prime like Young Kim, Shi Hyun Ahn, Sarah Lee, and Brittany Lincicome who are coming off rather (or very) disappointing seasons?
  
• Young Gun/New Blood Mysteries. Sure, the very best in the rookie classes of 2006 through 2009 are pretty well known, but how will former rookies playing their 1st full season like Amy Yang, Anja Monke, Anna Rawson, and Ashleigh Simon do in '09? Will Ai Miyazato and Brittany Lang be better than ever in 2009? Should we write off Julieta Granada and Meaghan Francella? Should we trust that the improved 2008 stats of players like Song-Hee Kim, Sun Young Yoo, Ji Young Oh, and Teresa Lu will result in even better results in 2009? And who among this year's rookies will step up and surprise?
  

And that's just the known unknowns. What about the unknown unknowns? I'm not looking for your best What Would Don Rumsfeld Do lines (although they would be much appreciated), but if you have other things I should be plugging into that 100-yen Nishijin crystal ball I'm using next week, let me know in comments!

オバマmania II

A little tribute to today's historic inauguration for MH fans: American Jedi painter Chaz Guest visited Obama City, Japan, recently. James at Japan Probe has the details, as usual. Here's the background in English:



And the Japanese TV report (which is where his Jedi roots become apparent):

Make It Hikaru Utada in 2009!

Hat tip to Bill Benzon for sending me to the Japan Times for this piece by Daniel Robson on the coming J-pop assault on America's top 40 charts. Here's hoping the 1st artist he features, Hikaru Utada, does as well in the English-speaking world in 2009 as Jero did in the Japanese-speaking world in 2008.

Here's the video for one of her older songs, "Travelling," which gets a lot of play on our Saturday rides to onechan's yochien:



Here's "Can U Keep a Secret," which stars not one but two robots:



Here's her debut single, "Automatic," which was released in late 1998, just before she turned 16:



By that point, she had been performing for 5 years already, mostly with her mom, Keiko Fuji, an enka singer in the '70s. Here's Utada covering the Carpenters, back when she started her solo career in Cubic U (a reference to her being a 3rd-generation female performer--her grandmother was a blind shamisen player):



Happy birthday, Hikki, and good luck! (Going by her first single, she won't need it....)

Japanese Star Wars v. Japanese Spider-Man

I would be remiss in my ongoing attempt to unite animation, sf, music, and golf otaku of all genders, ages, and nationalities were I not to pass along these gems from the 1970s:





Which is better at blowing your mind? Note how both the giant robot and Kamen Rider traditions are invoked in the latter. But the former's lyrics must not be underestimated.

Can you top these?

[Update 1 (9:57 am): I vote for the latter, on the grounds that its opening probably influenced The Tick's theme song:



But I'm willing to be persuaded.]

Ai Miyazato's Prospects in 2009

Ben Gibson takes a look at Ai Miyazato's LPGA career for bleacher report and gets a lot wrong. It's not just basic facts like her number of wins on the JLPGA in 2005 (6, not 5), her total number of JLPGA victories (14, not 15), or which peers from the JLPGA moved or are moving to the LPGA (Momoko Ueda already joined her in 2008, and it's Shiho Oyama, not Yuri Fudoh, who's coming in 2009) that Gibson butchers, but the reasons for her struggles since leaving the JLPGA.

Where Gibson rightly praises Miyazato's putting and attributes much of her difficulties to her low greens in regulation rate the past 2 seasons, he fails to note that injuries played a major role in her ballstriking problems in the 2nd half of 2007 and the 1st half of 2008. It's not so much her ball flight that's to blame (Gibson's hypothesis) as the swing flaws and loss of confidence that contributed to her downward spiral following the leg injury she sustained while getting to the finals in the HSBC Women's World Match Play Championship (where she eventually lost to fellow '06 rookie Seon Hwa Lee). I'm still searching the JLPGA site to see if I can find stats on her driving and approach shots from 2004 to 2006 (her bio page isn't as informative as the LPGA's 2006, 2007, 2008 performance charts), but I already have good evidence to support my argument. In 2006, when she was adjusting to life on the LPGA (and winning twice in 7 events on the JLPGA) she averaged 253 yards off the tee, hit over 75% of her fairways and 69% of her greens in regulation, and averaged 3.71 birdies per round and 1.78 putts per green in regulation. Those numbers dropped to roughly 240, 62%, 57%, 2.87, and 1.82 in 2007 and only improved slightly to around 243, 67%, 62%, 2.78, and 1.83 in 2008. When you're driving the ball shorter and wilder, of course you're going to hit fewer greens and find yourself further away from the hole when you do. (Keep in mind, too, that at her lowest point in her sophomore season, she stopped using her driver altogether.) To understand the size of the cliff Miyazato fell off, particularly on her tee shots, consider that she ranked outside Hound Dog's top 100 in total driving in 2008, but if you plug her 2006 numbers into his formula, she would have placed among the top 5 this past season.

Given this context that Gibson misses, it's no surprise that Miyazato has fallen so far in the world rankings since 2006. But she's already fought her way back from the brink, having broken back into the top 50 of the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index after nearly falling out of its top 100 at her worst. Along with her difficulties on the LPGA, her inability to add to her JLPGA victory total in 2007 and 2008 helps account for the fact thatFudoh and Ueda have remained well ahead of her on the Rolex Rankings, that she's been passed by Sakura Yokomine and Miho Koga, and that Mi-Jeong Jeon, Oyama, Ji-Hee Lee, Akiko Fukushima, Yuko Mitsuka, Hyun-Ju Shin, and Eun-A Lim from the JLPGA are all in her league. But when you consider that she made my top 10 on the JLPGA last season despite playing a limited schedule--after falling off the map the season before--I expect to see her climbing both the Sagarin and Rolex charts in 2009.

In fact, as Miyazato enters 2009 both injury-free and with plenty of time to have shaken off its after-effects, the real question is how close she can come to her peak performances from 2004 to 2006? I don't see any reason for her not to surpass her rookie season in the next few years. If she can get the driver working for her again like it was before her injury, look for that to happen sooner than later.

[Update 1 (1/18/09, 10:33 am): Check out the exchange between Gibson and me over at b/r. I certainly could have done more to highlight our areas of agreement, and for not doing that, I apologize. We both think Ai-chan is overdue for an LPGA win and that it could come sooner than many people think.]

[Update 2 (1/20/09, 10:36 pm): The JLPGA's stats don't have everything I'm looking for, at least as far as I can see, but I'm finding more indirect support for my belief that it's a combination of driving and approach shots that are most to blame for Miyazato's recent struggles. In 2005, she averaged 3.70 birdies per round (tied for the best on the JLPGA), which is very close to her 2006 LPGA average, and had the lowest scoring average of her career, 70.59 (over a half-stroke better than her 2006 LPGA average of 71.22, and even better than her 2004 JLPGA average, 70.85). In both 2004 and 2005, she averaged under 1.77 putts per green in regulation, #1 or #2 on the JLPGA, and in only 7 events in 2006, had an incandescent 1.728 PPGIR rate but "only" a 70.63 scoring average. To give herself so many good birdie chances, she had to be an excellent ballstriker. Now if only I can find direct evidence of that! More later....]

[Update 3 (1/22/09, 1:50 am): Hound Dog has more on Miyazato and total driving.]

[Update 4 (7/27/09, 4:15 am): Well, it took a bit longer than I hoped for, but Ai-chan's win at the Evian Masters was well worth the wait. The thing I find most heartening from it is that she didn't have to play out-of-this-world fantastic to win. She just put together 4 good rounds--not great ones, but good enough to pull it out. She doesn't seem to be riding a hot streak to me; she just seems to be playing very well. I don't see any reason why this can't continue for a long while.]

Rethinking the LPGA's Rookie of the Year Race

Warming up the Mostly Harmless 100-yen Nishijin crystal ball for my top 30 predictions with another look at the Class of 2009, and taking into account the fact that Wie will be spending a good part of the spring in class, Nordqvist will be spending most of the season on the LET (taking the Amy Yang route to world domination), and that Oyama will likely be spending a good part of the season on the JLPGA), here are my revised predictions in the Rookie of the Year Race.

Simply the Best
Ji-Yai Shin
Stacy Lewis
Shiho Oyama
Michelle Wie
Vicky Hurst

The Contenders
[high priority status]
Mika Miyazato
Mindy Kim
M.J. Hur

Quantum Leap Candidates
[high priority status]
Chella Choi

On the Bottom Looking Up
[high priority status but...]
Jeehae Lee

On the Outside Looking In
[low priority status]
Song Yi Choi
Haeji Kang
Anna Nordqvist
Tania Elosegui
Pornanong Phatlum
Jessica Shepley
Nontaya Srisawang
Sunny Oh
Angela Oh
Samantha Richdale
Kim Welch

Two questions: does anyone have a chance to outdo Shin in '09? and how would you rank the rookies?

[Update 1 (1/20/09, 8:52 pm): Here are Hound Dog's thoughts on the Class of 2009.]

Nordqvist Wins LET Q-School

2008 Women's British Amateur champion Anna Nordqvist bounced back from her disappointment at the LPGA's Q-School last December in a big way: she fired her 3rd straight sub-70 round to win the LET's Q-School. How did the players on the Mostly Harmless watch list finish? 6 of the 7 got virtually full playing privileges for 2009:

1st/-13 Nordqvist 75-69-67-68
4th/-6 Christel Boeljon 72-75-69-70
6th/-4 Beth Allen 70-71-72-75
10th/-2 Julieta Granada 72-72-72-74
19th/+2 Smriti Mehra 74-70-73-77
25th/+3 Jessica Ji 69-78-72-76
40th/+8 Stephanie Na 75-78-72-75

It'll be very interesting to see what kind of schedules dual LPGA/LET members Nordqvist and Granada decide on this season. If Nordqvist is as successful on the LET in '09 as Amy Yang was in '08, don't look for her to play many events on the LPGA outside of Europe. She's already stated she wants to qualify for the European team in the 2009 Solheim Cup (more good news for the Americans in the LPGA's Class of 2009!), so LET Rookie of the year has to be in her sights, as well. On the other hand, I expect Granada to focus on the LPGA at the start of the season after testing LET waters in Australia. It all depends on how she plays, then. If her futility on the LPGA continues, look for her to jump ship reasonably early. Similarly, if she can get comfortably in the LPGA's top 80 early in the season, look for her to play more on the LET, so she can maintain dual membership in '10. The only scenario I can imagine where she plays fewer than 10 events on the LET is if she's having a great LPGA season.

Best Blogs on Women's Golf: Hound Dog LPGA

On Monday I surveyed my goals in my golf writing at Mostly Harmless and promised I'd address "what I value from the best golf bloggers I've come across." The obvious place to begin fulfilling that promise is Hound Dog LPGA, Ken Hartis's golf blog.

Ken may be nothin' but a Hound Dog, but I'll take his incessant barking over anything the AP dishes out. Not only does he manage to survey who played well on any given Thursday, Friday, or Saturday every week the LPGA is playing in an elegant, inclusive, and unbiased fashion, his Sunday recaps, with their focus on what the players in contention actually did, are works of art. For someone like me, who's only paying for a high-speed internet connection and not for cable, his Sunday stories are just what I need to flesh out the drama I'm often tracking on LPGA.com's live leaderboard or catch me up if I've been doing family stuff rather than not-quite-live-blogging the LPGA. I really like the balance he has struck between identifying who's played the best in a given week, in a given stretch, over the course of a season, and over several seasons. Unlike too many golf writers who are paid to cover the LPGA, he doesn't focus exclusively on how the most dominant players in the field did (Sorenstam, Ochoa) or go on and on about media favorites who haven't been playing well (Wie for most of the past 2 seasons, but also Lincicome [who wilted in the spotlight soon after getting her 2nd career win], Gulbis, Rawson, and, to a lesser extent, Pressel and Castrale [who haven't actually played all that badly, just not as well as, say, Angela Stanford, Katherine Hull, Brittany Lang, or Jee Young Lee, to pick some names from the end of the '08 season]) or ignore anyone with an Asian-sounding last name (as Golf Channel highlights are wont to do). What he does focus on, as his end-of-season profiles each year make clear, is the players who have performed the best over the course of a season. But he also pays attention to those struggling with their games and trying to kick-start (or restart) their careers. He started looking at the race to keep your card back in September and October 2006 and has done it every season since.

Still, Hound Dog's game stories, player profiles, and features are only a small part of why his blog is the 1st--and best--source for all things LPGA. As I said before, he's the top dog when it comes to golf stats. It's not just that he has a nose for combining the most relevant existing stats to develop a better ranking system than Rolex or Sagarin, testing it out on the KLPGA, JLPGA (twice), Futures Tour, pushing it back over time to help him develop a list of the top 50 LPGA greats ever, and using it to help him make his preseason top 30 picks the last 2 seasons. And it's not just his deftness at explaining his statistical reasoning in standalone posts and responses to commenters. It's the fact that he has developed great new stats, like total driving, total putting, and strength of field, that allow him and us to put the accomplishments of the LPGA's best in context and to better appreciate them. Plus, he throws a statistical curveball here or there, such as in his round of the day, most average player, fluke victory lists.

Is it any surprise, then, that he was the 1st in the world of golf writing to project how soon Lorena Ochoa would qualify for the LPGA Hall of Fame?

I've learned a lot from Hound Dog's non-statistical research, as well. His focus on the fluctuations of the LPGA schedule from season to season is the most informative and balanced treatment I've seen on the web--and that's including pros like Jon Show who actually do a great job. His analysis of the LPGA's new eligibility and priority standards and the controversies they have generated at Q-School can't be beat. Speaking of controversies, he's one of the most level-headed and fair-minded bloggers in the middle of one that you're likely to come across.

It's no surprise, then, that in 2008 Hound Dog moved from blogger to join Rayn Ballengee of Waggle Room at SBNation, which has features that allow his readers to add supplemental posts and links to his main page, or that he's started co-hosting Inside the LPGA, one of the podcasts at Prime Sports Network. It's no wonder that other golf bloggers like Bill Jempty at The Florida Masochist and Jamie R. Saengsawang at Crosscourt Birdies are regulars at Hound Dog LPGA or that he has the best-informed commentariat of all the LPGA bloggers. One thing you can count on is that Ken's blog will remain LPGA Central in 2009.

[Update 1 (11:40 am): Looks like it's Hound Dog Day on teh internets.]

[Update 2 (1/16/09, 2:12 am): The good Dr. Frankenstat has struck again.]

Could Ochoa's Limited '09 Schedule Hurt Her POY Chances?

Lorena Ochoa's posted her 2009 LPGA schedule on her website. She's committed to playing 21 events (by my count), which is 1 fewer than her family-tragedy-shortened 2008 and 4 fewer than her previous 2 POY years. Meanwhile, Ji-Yai Shin played 37 events around the world in 2008, won more often, and earned more on the course than Ochoa did. Either Ochoa is supremely confident in her ability to face down her ever-growing lead chase pack (which includes Paula Creamer, Ya Ni Tseng, Cristie Kerr, and Suzann Pettersen, as well) this coming season, or she's resolved to seek a balance between her family life and professional life in her last 4+ seasons on tour and will let the chips fall where they may. What do you all think? More to the point, how many wins do you expect for her in '09 and how high on the money list do you expect her to finish?

7 to Watch at LET Q-School

The Ladies European Tour has been holding the final stage of its Q-School in Spain this week. After the 1st round, Korean Jessica Ji led at -4, American Beth Allen was 1 shot back, the LPGA's Julieta Granada and pre-qualifying stage medalist Christel Boeljon of the Netherlands were 3 shots back, India's Smriti Mehra was 5 back, and Sweden's Anna Nordqvist and Australia's Stephanie Na were another shot back. After the second round, Allen jumped into the lead with a 71 (-2), bringing her total though 36 holes to -5. Nordqvist leaped back into contention with a -4 round of her own that pulled her into a tie for 4th with Granada and Mehra 3 shots back, while 78s by Ji and Na dropped them 6 (tied with Boeljon) and 12 shots back, respectively.

There will be a cut to the top 50 after the end of today's round, so Na will need to improve on her T62 standing. After tomorrow's round, the top 30 players will get the equivalent of exempt status for 2009, while the remaining 20 will also have LET membership but only be able to get into a limited number of events.

[Update 1 (7:58 pm): Here are the 3rd-round results for the players I'm following:

Nordqvist 67, -8, 1st
Allen 72, -6, 3rd
Boeljon 69, -3, T7
Granada 72, -3, T7
Mehra, 73, -2, T10
Ji 72, E, T14
Na 72, +6, T43

The only name I know among those who missed the cut was Miriam Nagl, whose 76 today dropped her to +8/T56, just on the wrong side of the cut line.]

ANZ Ladies Masters Update: Ai Miyazato In, Amy Yang Out

Thanks to Chigger at Seoul Sisters.com for bringing to my attention this piece by Terry Wilson on the ANZ Ladies Masters, which looks at Amy Yang's difficult decision to skip the Australian tournament that she won as a 16-year-old amateur in 2006. Along the way, Wilson reveals that Ji-Yai Shin, Ya Ni Tseng, Inbee Park, Karrie Webb, and Ai Miyazato have committed to starting their seasons down under. They'll be joining the usual contingent of LET stalwarts, among them Laura Davies, Gwladys Nocera, Martina Eberl, Lotta Wahlin, Rebecca Hudson, Melissa Reid, Becky Brewerton, and Yuki Sakurai, along with players with dual LPGA/LET membership like Linda Wessberg, Anna Rawson, Ashleigh Simon, and Tania Elosegui (barring withdrawals in the next couple of weeks).

[Update 1 (1/14/09, 3:22 am): Yes, I did just confuse Amy Yang and Vicky Hurst! Somehow they occupy the same category in my brain: young golfers of Korean descent with strong ties outside Korea (Yang to Australia, Hurst to the U.S., where, as Jamie R.S. points out in comments, she was born in Melbourne, FL!) whom I expect to have breakout seasons in 2009. My bad!]

Look for Mina Harigae on the Futures Tour in '09

Well, well, well. Hannah Yun isn't the only talented young thing who's decided to strike while the iron is hot and leave a promising college golf career behind. Ryan Herrington reports that '08 Curtis Cupper and 2007 Women's Amateur Public Links champion Mina Harigae intends to turn pro in 2009. (See the Duke press release for more details.) While ranked only 49th among women amateurs, she was ranked 6th in the NCAA last November.

Harigae should fit right in among her peers who qualified for the Futures Tour in 2009. With each tournament reserving 3 spots for top 20 players in Golfweek's 2 rankings, she should be drafting her letters of request ASAP. Others looking to get into multiple FT events like Amanda Blumenherst and Tiffany Joh will likely be following in Stacy Lewis's footsteps and securing '10 status there as a fallback, in case they can't win enough through sponsor exemptions on the LPGA to get membership via an '09-money-list-top-80 equivalence--or disappoint at the LPGA Q-School like Alison Walshe. Walshe did earn exempt status on the Futures Tour for '09 with her T7 finish in their Q-School last November, so she'll be yet another player in the pipeline to watch this coming season.

Looks like I'll be doing some FT previews as well as LPGA ones later this month!

[Update 1 (1/16/09, 2:40 pm): Kevin Merfeld has more.]

[Update 2 (3/8/09, 12:09 am): Beth Ann Baldry has a Harigae update, after focusing on Ochoa and Hurst for most of her column. Not bad company!]

2009 Preseason Top 30 Predictions: Let the LPGA Prognostication Derby Begin

Hound Dog has kicked things off when it comes to predicting the top 30 at the end of the 2009 LPGA season, just as he did last year. I'll be entering the LPGA Prognostication Derby on the 1-year anniversary of my last attempt to fire up the Mostly Harmless 100-Yen Nishijin Crystal Ball (which apparently is a bit less reliable than the Mostly Harmless jinx).

For those of you who don't blog, feel free to join Seoul Sisters.com discussion board and participate in the Pakpicker thread I've started. Or just post your top 30 in comments or in an email to me at the_constructivist18[at]yahoo.com. Good luck, and happy picking!

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Mostly Harmless's Golf Writing

Bill Jempty, Ryan Ballengee, and Patricia Hannigan have started a conversation on Sal Johnson's take on the future of golf and the media that's worth contributing to. But how? I have nothing to say about the value of blogging or the tensions between journalists and bloggers that Michael Berube hasn't said better--and much funnier. So what to do? I'll focus here for a start on how I approach golf blogging. In a later post, I'll discuss what I value from the best golf bloggers I've come across.

My training as a scholar and teacher shapes my approach to golf blogging. My aim is to produce quality research, use it to educate a few people, and have a little fun in the process. Which is to say, (1) I don't aspire to become a golf journalist, much less somehow undermine or supplant golf journalism, (2) I follow established academic ethical codes (support claims with evidence, cite sources, and so on) and emergent bloggy ones (link link link!), (3) I pursue what I'm curious, excited, and enjoy writing about in the world of women's golf (with a few visits to other worlds sprinkled in here and there), (4) I try to develop a particular niche and a distinctive voice for my Mostly Harmless golf writing, (5) I am more interested in gaining the respect of the golf writers, bloggers, and commenters that I respect and admire than in making any money off my golf writing, and (6) I won't do anything to draw in a bigger audience to my golf writing that would sacrifice these goals and principles.

On the research side, one thing I enjoy doing is dusting off some ancient and atrophied math skills (back in the day I was a double major in English and math) by developing my Best of the LPGA, Best of the Young Guns, and Best Off the LPGA ranking systems. Although I've made other forays into the wide wide world of golf stats, Hound Dog's the leader of the pack in this neighborhood. So even though I'm sometimes in his league when it comes to predictions and competitions, the math stuff is mostly a fun side gig for me.

Where I actually can make the best contribution, I believe, is by drawing on my own areas of expertise in cultural, ethnic, and postcolonial studies to examine attitudes toward the sport and undercurrents in golf media and fan discourse, not to mention issues of language and culture, race and gender, and globalization and nationalism in golf. What draws me to the LPGA in particular is how global the women's game has become and the range of ways that players, tours, fans, sponsors, and the media have been responding to--and contributing to the (re)construction of--cultural, ethnic, and linguistic differences. With Seoul Sisters.com ably covering the KLPGA and the accomplishments of the LPGA's Korean contingent (along with the top Korean players and golfers of Korean descent on other tours), I've been free to branch out to consider the future of international team golf competitions, the prospects of women's professional golf in China, and the LPGA's new event in Brazil. But my particular research focus has gravitated toward the place of Japan in the world of women's golf and on golf's global youth movement.

I've focused on Japanese golfers on the LPGA and the JLPGA for a variety of reasons, not least among them that I started LPGA blogging while living in Fukuoka and teaching American literature and culture on a Fulbright. My wife is Japanese and my two daughters (onechan, 5, and imoto, 2) have dual Japanese and American citizenship, so it's probably no surprise that Ai Miyazato and Momoko Ueda are among my favorite players (while onechan favors Natalie Gulbis, Paula Creamer, and Karrie Webb), but it took me until last March to work on my rudimentary reading skills in Japanese and dive into the JLPGA web site. In addition to trying last season to produce better round-by-round overviews of JLPGA events than Kyodo News or Golfweek (which was far far easier than it oughtta be), I became interested in who were the JLPGA's finest golfers, why there has been a Se Ri Pak effect but no Ayako Okamoto effect on the LPGA, who from the JLPGA would be most likely to succeed on the LPGA, what American players and the LPGA could learn from Patti Rizzo, and what kind of schedules those with dual JLPGA/LPGA membership might put together in 2009. I still have a ways to go before I'm ready to focus on a book project that's come out of this research, but at least I have the idea and can continue to make progress on it here.

An outgrowth of my attention to Ai Miyazato's and Momoko Ueda's fellow LPGA rookies and to the up-and-coming players on the JLPGA (and, to a lesser extent, the KLPGA) has been my focus on the teens and 20somethings in the world of women's golf who are changing the face of the LPGA. Women's golf's global youth movement picked up a lot of steam in 2008, as Seon Hwa Lee became the 1st among the LPGA rookie classes of 2006, 2007, and 2008 to post multiple wins in a season and Morgan Pressel became the 1st to join her in emerging from the fast-growing pack of 1-time winners in their generation. With Ya Ni Tseng and Louise Friberg from this past year's rookies joining Super Sophs Inbee Park, Eun-Hee Ji, In-Kyung Kim, and Ji Young Oh and Junior Mints Julieta Granada and Meaghan Francella, that's 14 wins and counting from the Young Guns. Who will be next? Na Yeon Choi? Angela Park? Amy Yang? Ai Miyazato? Brittany Lang? Song-Hee Kim? Jane Park? Hee Young Park? Shanshan Feng? Or will Jee Young Lee or Momoko Ueda follow up on their non-member wins (in Korea and Japan, respectively) before them? Or perhaps someone from the much-heralded Class of 2009 will live up to her hype and steal the Young Guns' thunder? When you look at the list of young winners on the KLPGA and JLPGA in recent years not named Ji-Yai Shin--Hee Kyung Seo, Ha Neul Kim, Sun Ju Ahn, He Yong Choi, So Yeon Ryu, Sakura Yokomine, Miho Koga, Mi-Jeong Jeon, Yuko Mitsuka, Hyun-Ju Shin, Bo-Bae Song, Eun-A Lim, Erina Hara, Ayako Uehara, Akane Iijima, Mayu Hattori, Miki Saiki, Yukari Baba, Chie Arimura, Maiko Wakabayashi, and Na Zhang--you have to wonder who else will be coming over to the LPGA soon from Asia and making a big impact on the New Blood generation. (That's to say nothing of the NCAA and Futures Tour, which I plan to pay more attention to in 2009).

One area that I didn't expect to get so interested in researching, despite the fact that it connected closely to my interest in globalization and transnationalism, was the infrastructure (both organizational and financial) of women's professional golf--from how tour schedules get put together to how they connect with TV deals, from the new rules for membership and priority status on the LPGA to a controversy (like over tying membership to language ability--and backtracking [with good reason]) or two. As a result, I'm actually more optimistic than most everyone I've been reading on the LPGA's prospects for a new TV contract for 2010-2015. (But more on that later.)

On the teaching side, my major aims are to help LPGA fans (whether casual or devoted) dig deeper and perhaps even educate the golf media in the process. With no regular AP writer covering the LPGA last season and with many good local golf writers getting the ax in '08, there was a serious lack of context and perspective, not to mention detail, in the game stories that get the widest audience on sports pages and news aggregators. Outside of Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa, Paula Creamer, and Michelle Wie, the casual sports fan might have heard of only a handful of other LPGA players, mostly American (and blonde), and the AP was doing little (if anything) to change that. Even the magazine writers paid to cover the LPGA left me looking for more on LPGA.com and GolfObserver.com. So I worked out a more systematic approach to previewing and commenting on LPGA events this season than last, trying to uncover the rounds and the players that even the best LPGA bloggers weren't attending to all that closely. (I tried to do the same, on a smaller scale, for the JLPGA in 2008.)

In addition, by raising questions, identifying turning points, noting trends, marking milestones, offering criticisms of bad reporting, analysis, and opinion writing in the golf media (by Steve Elling [twice], Ron Sirak [twice], Jason Sobel [twice], Doug Ferguson, and Sal Johnson [twice]), and looking for future LPGA stars (like Mika Miyazato, Hannah Yun, Cheyenne Woods, Kyung Kim, and others), I built in 2008 on my attempts the previous year to call attention to the quality of competition on the LPGA by organizing LPGA-centric blog carnivals, identifying LPGA generations, and introducing well-known, better-known, and lesser-known LPGA players. I see last week's 6-part series as the culmination of these efforts to highlight the very best players on tour.

But just as important to me has been my attempt to convey the struggles of those trying to make it as professional golfers by following the ups and downs of the budding careers of everyone in the Young Gun generation, not just the heads of the class. In my 1st junior golf tournament, I was paired with Moira Dunn, who would go on to join the LPGA in 1994. I've followed her career ever since and even though she's had a handful of good seasons and has 1 career win, she's been struggling to hold onto her card the last several seasons. While I've been attuned for a long time to following her competition in the middle and lower reaches of the LPGA, I've enjoyed tracking more closely over the past 3 seasons how the newbies have been doing relative to her. I hope my readers gain perspective on career arcs and come to appreciate how good the best of the newbies have to be to outdo tough competitors like Moira.

When I consider my research and teaching efforts as a whole, I'm hoping that those bloggers and journalists who reach a wider audience than me might consider what they can learn from what I've done here and how to incorporate some of it into their own golf writing. In a broader sense, the golf writing I do here at Mostly Harmless is an experiment in how much and what kind of an influence I can have on its various constituencies and institutions, from fans, players, and tournament organizers to writers, sponsors, and tour officials.

So, yes, this blog is for fun--which means I can experiment with more free-form autobiographical pieces and on-course reports (3 of my favorite posts evah), focus on a cute moment between Tiger and Sam Alexis Woods, make poetry out of a Momoko Ueda fingernail injury, explain why the LPGA is more interesting than the PGA, and root on my favorite golfers (Ai-chan, Moira Dunn, Seon Hwa Lee, Ya Ni Tseng, Momo-chan, In-Kyung Kim, Mi Hyun Kim, Jeong Jang, Eun-Hee Ji, Na Yeon Choi, and Jane Park)--but that doesn't mean I take my golf blogging any less seriously.

Simply put, my ultimate aim is to become one of the preeminent American experts on the LPGA and JLPGA on the web. And maybe someday, off it, too. Mostly Harmless is my means to these ends.

Ranking the 2008 LPGA Top 30 Predictors

In yesterday's post, I surveyed how my preseason top 30 picks for the 2008 LPGA season panned out and generated an overall 2008 ranking that's an average of the 5 top systems in place for identifying the best players on the LPGA. In this one, I'm modifying the scoring system for Seoul Sister.com's Pakpicker competition to determine how I did relative to Hound Dog, Mulligan Stu, Bill Jempty, and Ron Sirak.

Here's how it works. First, we get points for each of our picks who finished in the top 30 (including ties), on the following scale: 30 for 1st, 29 for 2nd, 28 for 3rd, and so on, down to 1 for 30th. Next, we get bonus points for the accuracy of our picks: 20 points for nailing a pick and a point off for every spot we're off (up to 19, to avoid turning the bonus into a penalty). The maximum number of points you can get for a single player, then, is 50 (picking as our top player the actual #1).

(Drum roll, please.)

Here's how I rank the 2008 LPGA top 30 predictors:

1st Mulligan Stu (646)
2nd Hound Dog (604)
3rd The Constructivist (569)
4th Bill Jempty (529)
5th Ron Sirak (518)

Congratulations to Mulligan Stu! So what accounted for his dominating victory? The most important factor was that he was the only one of us to pick Ya Ni Tseng to make the top 30 (bringing his total of correct top 30 picks to 21; what sunk Jempty and Sirak was that they missed an additional 3 top 30 players). The rest of his lead can be accounted for mainly by the fact that he picked Inbee Park and Maria Hjorth higher and Jee Young Lee and Morgan Pressel lower than Hound Dog and I.

So there you have it. Once again, the mainstream golf media loses to mere golf bloggers. Better luck this year, Ron!

Before there was J-pop . . .

I remember this song from my youth:



It's the first (and only) Japanese-language song to be a hit in America.

2008 Preseason Predictions, Revisited

Last January I joined Hound Dog, Mulligan Stu, Bill Jempty, and Ron Sirak in attempting to predict the top 30 on the LPGA at the end of the 2008 season. Hound Dog and I checked in with mid-season reports, but how did I end up doing? Here's my predicted top 30, with their actual 2008 results in parentheses (from the LPGA Official Money List, the Rolex Rankings, the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index, Hound Dog's Top 70, Mostly Harmless's Best of the LPGA: average ranking), along with a few comments:

1. Lorena Ochoa (#1, #1, #1, #1, #1: 1). Big surprise--everyone got this pick right.
2. Paula Creamer (#2, #4, #3, #2, #2: 2.6). I'd say she's the consensus #2, wouldn't you?
3. Seon Hwa Lee (#6, #11, #15, #9, #8: 9.8). She got 2 wins, but didn't finish as consistently well as in previous seasons. Not the breakthrough year I was looking for.
4. Jee Young Lee (#21, #15, #16, #22, #18: 18.4). Nice push at the very end of the season turned what could have been a big disappointment into a medium-sized one.
5. Annika Sorenstam (#4, #3, #5, #4, #3: 3.8). She exceeded my expectations, despite struggling after a near-perfect Michelob Ultra (her last LPGA win).
6. Morgan Pressel (#24, #19, #48, #27, #25: 28.6). Another Young Gun who really let me down this season, even though she did get her 2nd career win. But she gave onechan an autographed ball at the Wegmans, so all is forgiven!
7. Jeong Jang (#12, #13, #7, #12, #12: 11.2). Came close so many times in early '08, but between those near misses and her persistent wrist problems, she didn't meet my expectations in '08.
8. Hee-Won Han (#19, #18, #13, #16, #15: 16.2). She did ok coming off maternity leave, but not as well as I hoped she would.
9. Se Ri Pak (#52, #31, #93, #63, #44: 56.6). The 1st of my picks to miss the top 30 completely. Ouch.
10. Mi Hyun Kim (#40, #29, #22, #29, #27: 29.4). Didn't bounce back from off-season knee surgery as quickly or as effectively as I'd hoped.
11. Angela Park (#17, #22, #27, #25, #21: 22.4). Got hit by the sophomore jinx early in the season when she took a slow-play penalty while in contention in Hawaii, took a long time to bounce back, and finished kind of blah.
12. Stacy Prammanasudh (#37, #34, #44, #36, #36: 37.4). Another big disappointment--the 2nd of my picks to miss the top 30 entirely.
13. Cristie Kerr (#10, #7, #6, #6, #6: 7). Extended her million-dollar season streak to 5 with a great second half that included her 11th career win.
14. Natalie Gulbis (#56, #39, #79, #56, #46: 55.2). Her recurring back injury really limited her play the second half of the season, which explains why she's my 3rd pick to miss the top 30.
15. Suzann Pettersen (#7, #5, #4, #7, #5: 5.6). Even though she couldn't find that next LPGA win in '08, she had a very consistent and successful season--definitely exceeded my expectations.
16. Ai Miyazato (#46, #37, #46, #49, #41: 43.8). Made a decent comeback from her woes in the 2nd half of her sophomore season (leg injury, swing flaw, confidence loss), getting into contention a couple of times in '08, but she's still my 4th pick to miss the top 30 and yet another Junior Mint disappointment.
17. In-Kyung Kim (#22, #25, #28, #20, #22: 23.4). This "punk kid" (as she described herself) got her 1st LPGA win in '08, coming back from a so-so start to the season, but still didn't perform up to my expectations.
18. Momoko Ueda (#45, #14, #26, #35, #28: 29.6). Without her 2 wins on the JLPGA, she would have dropped sharply in the world rankings and dropped out of the top 30 (she's already out in winnings and Hound Dog's ranking). But I'm not complaining.
19. Eun-Hee Ji (#15, #17, #14, #13, #14: 14.6). I ranked her as the top Super Soph at one point this season (soon after she got her 1st LPGA win) and she'll be back there again if she continues to outperform her peers. Her consistency reminds me of Seon Hwa Lee.
20. Jane Park (#29, #47, #32, #34, #33: 35). Didn't have the breakthrough season I predicted, and a late slump made her my 5th pick to miss the top 30.
21. Karrie Webb (#18, #10, #10, #15, #10: 12.6). Even though she didn't win on the LPGA in '08, she still exceeded my expectations by a lot.
22. Brittany Lincicome (#92, #63, #168, n.r., n.r.: too high). My 6th pick to miss the top 30 is my pick for biggest disappointment of the year.
23. Christina Kim (#27, #38, #30, #26, #29: 30). She just squeaked into the top 30, but always seems to have an off-year when the Solheim Cup isn't being played.
24. Shi Hyun Ahn (#55, #43, #64, #47, #49: 51.6). She only played 18 events in '08, so I suspect injuries curtailed her usually-limited LPGA schedule. Whatever the reason, she's my 7th pick to miss the top 30.
25. Angela Stanford (#9, #9, #12, #8, #7: 9). She's definitely the biggest upside surprise in my entire top 30, thanks to a torrid finish to the '08 season that included 2 wins.
26. Juli Inkster (#38, #24, #18, #32, #26: 27.6). Another vet who benefitted from high world rankings, but given her extremely limited schedule, I'll take what I can get at this point.
27. Meena Lee (#38, #58, #42, #38, #37: 42.6). My 8th pick to miss the top 30 was one of the smaller disappointments of '08, all things considered.
28. Laura Davies (#95, #68, #96, n.r., n.r.: too high). Dropped off the face of the LPGA earth in '08, but at least she has an excuse.
29. Sophie Gustafson (#28, #33, #55, #37, #34: 37.4). Her season could have been entirely different if she had held it together 1 Sunday in early June, but as it is she's my 10th pick to miss the top 30. Came pretty close to perfect on her money list position, though.
30. Inbee Park (#8, #21, #34, #13, #11: 17.4). Got that 1st win--and made it a major--but seriously slumped after it. Even so, she exceeded my expectations by a wide margin.

So who'd I miss? Ya Ni Tseng (avg. 4.4), Na Yeon Choi (13.4), Karen Stupples (17.8), Helen Alfredsson (18.4), Candie Kung (20.4), Laura Diaz (20.8), Song-Hee Kim (21), Maria Hjorth (24), and Katherine Hull (24.4) were the only other players whose average ranking was less than 30. Others who came closer to the top 30 than many of my bad picks included Ji Young Oh (32.6), Brittany Lang (33.8), Sun Young Yoo (36.4), Nicole Castrale (38.6), Catriona Matthew (39.4), Lindsey Wright (40.8), Teresa Lu (41.6), and Hee Young Park (44.8).

Using this average ranking system, here's the consensus top 30 for 2008:

1. Ochoa
2. Creamer
3. Sorenstam
4. Tseng
5. Pettersen
6. Kerr
7. Stanford
8. SH Lee
9. Jang
10. Webb
11. NY Choi
12. Ji
13. Han
14. I Park
15. Stupples
T16. JY Lee, Alfredsson
18. Kung
19. Diaz
20. SH Kim
21. A Park
22. IK Kim
23. Hjorth
24. Hull
25. Inkster
26. Pressel
27. MH Kim
28. Ueda
29. C Kim
30. Oh

FYI, here are the best of the rest (those with average rankings under 50):

31. Lang
32. J Park
33. Yoo
T34. Prammanasusdh, Gustafson
36. Castrale
37. Matthew
38. Wright
39. Lu
40. M Lee
41. Miyazato
42. HY Park

Next post I'll compare my results to everyone else's....

2000-2008 LPGA Break Points, Revisited

Last October I looked at the season-by-season winnings of the #1, #2, #5, #10, #20, #30, #50, #80, #100, and #125 players on the LPGA from 2000 to 2008. Here are the final results from this past season, along with a little bit of contextualization and analysis:

1. Lorena Ochoa $2.76M
2. Paula Creamer $1.82M
5. Helen Alfredsson $1.43M
10. Cristie Kerr $1.11M
20. Laura Diaz $809.5K
30. Brittany Lang $630.3K (1.045% of the total purse for the season)
50. Allison Fouch $375.3K (.622%)
80. Wendy Doolan $137.5K (.228%)
100. Julieta Granada $101.1K (.168%)
125. Young-A Yang $68.8K

Why these positions on the money list? The top 50 on the money list typically get into the late-season Asian Swing; the top 80 get Category 1 status the following season; #100 is the cut-off for Category 11 status; and #125 is the cut-off for Category 15 status. While it used to be the top 90 who got fully exempt status (roughly equivalent to Category 1 in the current membership system), I thought it would be interesting to track the top 80 trends here--plus it would help us look ahead and try to figure out where the upcoming season's "cut line" will fall.

What I was originally looking for when compiling the decade's stats was evidence that the talent pool on the LPGA has been getting deeper. I was a little surprised to find that Doolan's takings this past season were mid-to-low for a #80 player: while they were the best in recent years, they were nowhere close to Silvia Cavalleri's peak of .288% in 2004; whereas 4 of the 1st 5 #80 players got over .250% this decade, nobody has come close since 2004. In comments, Hound Dog suggested that the increasing number of limited-field events may help account for this trend. To test his hypothesis, let's see if the #30 players have been taking home even more than the #50, #80, and #100 players over the 2nd half of the decade.

#30 takings: .767% (2000), .825% (2001), .881% (2002), .984% (2003), .978% (2004), 1.002% (2005), .757% (2006), .857% (2007); 2000-2008 average: .900%; 2000-2004 average: .887%; 2005-2008 average: .915%

#50 takings: .472% (2000), .515% (2001), .481% (2002), .521% (2003), .555% (2004), .546% (2005), .529% (2006), .484% (2007); 2000-2008 average: .525%; 2000-2004 average: .509%; 2005-2008 average: .545%

#80 takings: .275% (2000), .252% (2001), .263% (2002), .214% (2003), .288% (2004), .227% (2005), .224% (2006), .214% (2007); 2000-2008 average: .243%; 2000-2004 average: .258%; 2005-2008 average: .223%

#100 takings: .203% (2000), .148% (2001), .158% (2002), .159% (2003), .183% (2004), .144% (2005), .144% (2006), .135% (2007); 2000-2008 average: .160%; 2000-2004 average: .170%; 2005-2008 average: .148%

The gap between the #30 and #50 player on tour had been growing steadily between 2000 and 2003, from .295 to .310 to .400 to .463, and only dropped slightly in 2004 to .423; from 2005 to 2006, however, the gap declined sharply from .456 to .228, and only went back up to .373 and .423 in the past 2 seasons. That averages out to a .378 gap in the 1st half of the decade and a .370 gap the past 4 seasons. So while a lot depends on the size of the gap this coming season before we can draw any definite conclusions, the data suggests that with most of the top 50 players getting into most of the limited-field events, there hasn't been a sharper separation between the #30 and #50 players over the course of the decade; if anything, the #50 players have been making up a little ground on the #30 players over the second half of the decade.

Similarly, the gap between the #30 and #80 players grew steadily from 2000 to 2003 (from .492 to .573 to .618 to .770) and dropped slightly in 2004 (to .690); where the data departs from the #30-#50 gap, however, is from 2005-2008 (moving from .775 to .533 to .643 to .817): the average gap in the 1st half of the decade was .629, while in the 2nd half of the decade (so far) it grew to .692. 2009 will have to buck this trend in a serious way to make a dent in that increasing separation between the #30 and #80 players. Meanwhile, the gap between the #50 and #80 players is widening even further, from .251 in the 1st half of the decade to .322 in the 2nd (thus far). That's a 22% increase compared to a 9% increase--pretty serious.

It seems clear, then, that the increase in limited-field events in the 2nd half of this decade is benefitting the top 50 players over the next 30 players on the LPGA in a fairly significant way. I see no reason for this trend not to continue. But as the #50 player tends to be doing better relative to the #80 player than the #30 player over time, I also see evidence that the talent pool on the LPGA is deepening.

This trend becomes even clearer when you bring the #100 player into the picture. Just as before, the gap between the #30 and #100 players has been widening from the 1st half (.717) to the 2nd half of the decade (.767), but the separation has been even sharper between the #50 and #100 players (from .339 to .397). Again, the #50 player's takings relative to the #100 player are increasing faster than the #30 player's, although the difference is a bit smaller (a 14.6% increase compared to a 6.5% increase). What this suggests is that the bottom of the 2nd 50 on the LPGA have been holding the line a little better than the top, despite being similarly shut out of most limited-field events. In fact, the distance between the #80 and #100 players actually shrunk from .088 in 2000-2004 to .075 in 2005-2008--almost a 15% drop!

Here's further evidence that the talent pool on the LPGA has been deepening this decade. With the #100 players closing the gap on the #80 players, the competition for those last Category 1 spots has been getting more intense (or would have, if the current rules had been in place all decade). If this trend continues, we're likely to see more years like last one, where Granada had the 3rd-best takings of the decade among the #100 players, coming very close to the decade's average, while Doolan's were only the 5th-best among the #80 players, significantly behind both the 4th-best and the decade's average. And I see little reason for it not to continue, as the vast majority of the 56 players I just profiled are top 80 material for 2009, which leaves only 30-35 more spots for the players whose careers to date have been only slightly less successful than those of the LPGA's elite. When you consider that 3 of the 2008 money list's top 30, 10 of the top 50, 30 of the top 80, and 56 of the top 100 have not had careers that warranted inclusion on my list, you're likely to join me in concluding that the competition for those spots is only going to heat up in 2009.

So if you figure that taking home 1% of the total 2009 purse gets you top 30 status, .5% gets you into the top 50, and .25% gets you into the top 80, then the numbers everyone will be shooting for this coming season are something like $550K, $275K, and $137.5K (assuming the total purse is $55M). With Annika Sorenstam out of the picture, that puts another $1-2M on the table for everyone else next season, when you take into account her winning percentages and winnings percentages and rates. It'll be interesting to see how it gets divvied up. Will anyone outside the top 30 see any of it?

The Day the Earth Stood in the Balance

Liked the title of my critique of the 2008 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still that I recently posted over at sf@SF so much I thought I'd link to it here. As you can see from the tags, it may be of interest to those who come to Mostly Harmless for something--anything!--besides women's golf.

Time for the Terrible Twos

It's Mostly Harmless's second birthday today. On to the terrible twos! Let's give imoto a run for her money. No, wait, better to pass along some tantrum antidotes:







Yup, we're all about the public service here.

News Flash: Julieta Granada Pursuing Plan B

Julieta Granada is one of the early leaders in the Ladies European Tour's Q-School. Looks like she took a long hard look at the LPGA and LET schedules and realized she could probably win enough on the LET on a limited schedule to have somewhere to play professionally in 2010, just in case her 2-year slump on the LPGA continues in 2009 (even though she can still get into most any tournament she wants this season on the LPGA).

[Update 1 (1/8/09, 1:07 am): The scoreboard is still down, but 1 of the players within 1 of Granada is LPGA rookie Anna Nordqvist, who looks to be aiming at the Amy Yang route to greatness on the LPGA (as a result of only having Category 16 status there this upcoming season.]

[Update 2 (1:26 am): The field list is working, though, and already there are 2 strange WDs: the LPGA class of '08's Hwanhee Lee and NCAA sensation/'08 LPGA Q-School disappointment Dewi Claire Schreefel.]

[Update 3 (1/9/09, 8:45 pm): Here's the leaderboard. Granada and Nordqvist are 2 of only 4 players under par with 1 round left to play.]

[Update 4 (1/10/09, 7:10 pm): Granada and Nordqvist tied for 2nd at -10 in the 1st stage of the LET Q-School. Now they have to finish in the top 30 in the final stage next week to get priority status and in the top 50 to be LET members. Shouldn't be too tough for them.]

The LPGA's Top Rivalries: New Blood

The 2009 rookie class may be the most anticipated and highly touted in LPGA history, but only time will tell if they're the most talented--each of the 3 Young Gun classes immediately preceding them has set the bar high. Could this 1st class in the New Blood generation be the 1st to produce 3 who join the Million Dollar Club in their rookie year? Now that would be something special! Which of their rivalries-to-be has the most potential to join the LPGA's top ones?

Ji-Yai Shin v. Shiho Oyama: Shin is already one of the best in the world, not to mention already a 3-time winner on the LPGA, while Oyama battled her way back this past season to another top 10 on the JLPGA (but still finished behind Shin, Momoko Ueda, and Ai Miyazato, in my book). With 11 career JLPGA wins in 9 seasons, though, Oyama is anything but an untested rookie. Her most notable accomplishment was breaking Yuri Fudoh's 6-year stranglehold on the top of the money list in 2006--something Ai Miyazato was never able to do in her short career as a full-time JLPGAer--but it was the only time she posted a sub-71 scoring average in her career (although she has been sub-72 for the past 4 seasons). So while she's definitely the underdog, she's got the game and experience to step right up. The only thing that makes Rookie of the Year difficult for both these players is the likelihood that they'll play multiple JLPGA events in '09. But if Shin is contending for Player of the Year, as I expect her to, she may even skip some JLPGA majors.

Stacy Lewis v. Michelle Wie: Both made runs at qualifying for the LPGA via the new "top 80-equivalent" rule, but had to settle for Q-School after Lewis failed to replicate her U.S. Women's Open genius and Wie had to live with her boneheaded failure to sign her card while in contention at the State Farm Classic. Lewis's greater tournament experience showed in the final round there, as she earned medalist honors over the likes of Amy Yang and Oyama, while Wie faded out of contention. Look for them to bring the buzz in '09, but, realistically, making the top 20 on the money list in their 1st full season of competition at the highest levels of the women's game would be a fantastic accomplishment for each of them.

Vicky Hurst v. Mindy Kim v. M.J. Hur v. Chella Choi: These players are used to battling each other on the Futures Tour, so it'll be interesting to see how they handle the LPGA's bigger stage. Hur had problems on Sundays when in contention, while Hurst (the Ochoa of the Futures Tour) and Kim (the Pettersen?) had no such difficulties, accounting for almost half the wins on tour in '08. Choi underwhelmed all year until making a questionable playoff at Q-School and making the most of that opportunity. I expect them all to keep their cards in '10, but to me Hurst is the only legitimate top 20 threat. She's going to be trying to make like Seon Hwa Lee, while the rest will be trying to be the Angela Park of '09.

Meanwhile, '08 FT event winners Haeji Kang, Sunny Oh, Kim Welch, and Samantha Richdale will just be hoping to get into enough LPGA events in '09 to get into the top 40 of the money list at some point in the season (doing so would get them into 7 events in a row, at least, which would give them a legitimate shot at the top 80 by season's end). They may end up with solid or even great LPGA careers, but they aren't likely to be ROY threats this coming season.

Mika Miyazato v. Anna Nordqvist: Japan's and Europe's top amateurs handled Q-School pressure quite differently. Miyazato coolly hovered around the top 10 all tournament, while Nordqvist came back to give herself a shot at the top 20 on Sunday, but failed to come through. As a result, they're in somewhat the same position as, say, Hee Young Park (fully exempt in '08) and Na Yeon Choi (non-exempt in '08) were at the start of last season--which is to say, don't count Nordqvist out of the Rookie of the Year race just yet. Realistically, though, top 40 finishes would be great accomplishments for them. They've both prepared themselves well for the LPGA (as well as the JLPGA and LET), but there's a big difference between getting into professional events as an amateur and being a professional day in and day out.

[Update 1 (2:58 pm): Steve Elling gets the significance of (at least some in) this rookie class. And thanks to Jay Busbee for the link over at Devil Ball Golf!]

[Update 2 (1/8/09, 1:04 am): Just noticed that Anna Nordqvist (a Category 16 player on the LPGA this coming season) is one of the early leaders in the LET's Q-School. Looks like she's taking Amy Yang as her model and considering a split schedule in '09. Makes sense when you look at the gaps in the LPGA's schedule and compare them to the LET's. Another lucky break for the American rookies!]

[Update 3 (2:12 am): Jay Coffin buries his lede and asks the wrong question over at Golf Channel. The right question is, "Does Michelle Wie have a chance to win the '09 LPGA Rookie of the Year race?" And the answer is a resounding, "no," as he reports that she's likely to play only 12-14 events this coming season. If Lewis doesn't finish ahead of Wie, it's going to be a huge letdown for her.]

[Update 4 (2:22 am): Lisa Mickey's Futures Tour preview is another must-read. When will someone put her in charge of communications at the LPGA?]

[Update 5 (1/13/09, 11:42 am): The LPGA has begin a series of rookie profiles. The first looks at the two Chois, Elosegui, and Hur.]

[Update 6 (1/20/09, 10:06 pm): Here's the new rookie profile page, adding Hurst, Kim, Lee, and Kang.]

[Update 7 (1/27/09, 4:16 pm): The ever-growing list now includes Angela Oh, Nordqvist, Miyazato, and Lewis.]

[Update 8 (2/2/09, 9:24 pm): New additions to the rookie list include Richdale, Phatlum, Sunny Oh, and Oyama. I think they made a few mistakes in Oyama's bio, but I don't have time to check it right now.]

[Update 9 (2/10/09, 11:30 am: Here are the last additions to the rookie profiles: Wie, Welch, Srisawang, Shin, Shepley.]

The LPGA's Top Rivalries: Young Guns

It's time for my favorite part of this year's rundown of the LPGA's top rivalries: a look at the LPGA's Young Guns--those players who started their LPGA careers in the last 3 seasons.

Head of the Class? Ya Ni Tseng v. Seon Hwa Lee: Even though she's struggled with her putting the past 2 seasons after a brilliant rookie campaign, Lee has been the paragon of consistent excellence in her generation, heading the 2005 Futures Tour's money list, winning Rookie of the Year in 2006 over much more celebrated players, getting at least 1 win each of her 3 seasons on tour, and averaging over $1M in winnings per season. Last season, Tseng just missed averaging 4 birdies per round and taking the #2 spot on the money list from Paula Creamer--not to mention about 7 more wins--but still managed to win a major, break the $1.75M barrier in season winnings, post a sub-71 scoring average, and beat out an inspired Na Yeon Choi for Rookie of the Year. If she can learn from Lee's ability to close the deal when in contention and match her resilience and consistency--not to mention get healthy and improve her accuracy off the tee--Lorena Ochoa should be watching out for her this season...and for many more to come.

Major Talents: Morgan Pressel v. Inbee Park: Whereas Pressel is the quintessential precision player, Park is an inspired putter. Each has struggled after making her 1st LPGA victory a major, Pressel with swing changes in a quixotic quest for more distance and Park with a sophomore slump in the second half of the past season. While both have been outdistanced and overshadowed by fellow major winner Ya Ni Tseng, only Pressel has gotten win #2--and has failed to break the $1M barrier in season winnings at least once.

Best Without a Win? Na Yeon Choi v. Jee Young Lee v. Angela Park: Yes, Lee has a non-member victory (in the 2005 LPGA event in Korea), so perhaps I should stop putting her in this category, but like Choi and Park, I see her as one of the most likely candidates in her generation to break through to the game's highest levels. They all make over 90% of their cuts, rack up a lot of top 10s and top 20s, and have put themselves in contention multiple times. But they're a study in contrasting styles: Choi is a strong all-around player, Lee is a bomber with great touch on the greens, and Park is a precision player. It'll be very interesting to follow these 3 over the course of their careers.

What Have You Done for Me Lately? Eun-Hee Ji v. In-Kyung Kim v. Ji Young Oh v. Louise Friberg v. Julieta Granada v. Meaghan Francella: They all have 1 career win with varying degrees of other success. Who among them will avoid the 1-hit wonder label? The 1st 2 for sure. The next 2? I hope. The last 2? Stranger things have happened.

The Expectations Game: Amy Yang v. Ai Miyazato v. Brittany Lang v. Song-Hee Kim v. Momoko Ueda v. Jane Park v. Hee Young Park v. Shanshan Feng: Some of them have built up expectations with international victories (Miyazato with 14 on the JLPGA, Ueda with 7 on the JLPGA, Hee Young Park with 4 on the KLPGA, Yang with 2 on the LET), others with domestic success (Lang and Jane Park on the NCAA, Kim on the Futures Tour), and some from carrying the weight of a nation's hopes on their shoulders (Miyazato, Ueda, Feng). So far their LPGA results haven't met such high expectations. But there's plenty of time for them to reach their potential.

The LPGA's Top Rivalries: Prime Time

It's time to continue this look at the LPGA's top rivalries by focusing on players in their prime: those who started their LPGA careers between 2000 and 2005. The name of the younger 3-year-cohort is obvious: with all due respect to Paula Creamer, the Classes of 2003-2005 are most definitely the Ochoa Generation. But I've called the Classes of 2000-2002 Seoul Sisters because their top 3 players are so closely matched. Let's work our way up to the top rivalries in these generations.

Meena Lee-Shi Hyun Ahn-Young Kim: The first cohort of Seoul Sisters to underachieve on the LPGA still has a lot of life left in them, despite being overshadowed by the trailblazers ahead of them and outpaced by the top Young Guns. Lee quietly broke the $500K barrier for the 3rd time in her 4 years on tour, but even though she posted the 2nd-best scoring average of her career she couldn't break into the top 30 on the money list in '08. Ahn was limited by injuries to only 18 LPGA events, even fewer than the 19 she played the previous 2 seasons, but whereas she had been able to be a pretty consistent top 30 player even on a very limited LPGA schedule by Korean standards in her 1st 4 seasons, she dropped all the way to #55 in '08. (I had made the mistake of predicting a #27 finish for her.) Kim, by contrast, played the most LPGA events in '08 of any year in her career (24), but only had 2 really good weeks all season and only squeaked into the top 50 by the thinnest of margins. Still, less than $200K in career winnings separate these 3 players, so perhaps they'll push each other to improve on their 6-7-8 standing in The Ochoa Generation.

Candie Kung-Angela Stanford-Natalie Gulbis: I'd like to say I had a feeling around this time last season that Kung was due for a breakout year, but actually it was more of a vague sense that 2007 was an anomaly for someone who had been a consistent top 30 player her entire career. It wasn't a strong enough feeling for me to put her in my preseason top 30 last January. For that matter, I was nervous putting Angela Stanford as high as #25--I doubted she'd be able to follow up on what had been her best-ever season. No, the player I had the most confidence in back then was Natalie Gulbis. Shows what I know! Now Kung is the most likely to be the 1st among these players to cross the $4M mark in career winnings and Stanford has the best odds among them of making the top 10 on the '09 money list, while Gulbis's future is dependent on the health of her back. Still, she's less than a half-million dollars behind Kung in career winnings and is coming off a long late-season rest, so as long as she stays healthy there's no reason this trio can't keep playing leapfrog for years to come and challenge Suzann Pettersen in the race to chase down Grace Park on the career money list in the process.

Christina Kim-Stacy Prammanasudh: Kim is the iron woman among the Americans on tour; 2008 was her 3rd 30-start season in her 6-year career (her lowest number of events ever was 28). This past year was her best in terms of top 10s and winnings, but that 3rd win still eluded her grasp and she barely made the top 30 on the money list. Still, '09 is a Solheim Cup year and she's motivated to improve on her 4th-place standing on the qualifying list for the U.S. team. Look for her to extend her lead on the career money list on Prammanasudh even further next season. Although Stacy P kept her scoring average below 72 for the 5th time in 6 LPGA seasons, she could barely manage a top 40 on the money list, breaking a streak of 2 straight top 20s. As a result, she was one of my big disappointments in '08 (she was my preseason pick for #12). Hopefully the pressure of fighting for one of those last Solheim Cup spots will help focus her game in '09. I'd love to see her bounce back in a big way.

Jeong Jang-Hee-Won Han-Grace Park: Jang moved to the head of her generation in 2008 on the strength of her 4th straight million-dollar season, but it was a year of mightabeens, as all 8 of her top 10s could easily have become her 3rd career win. She still trails Han and Park in that category by a significant margin, despite the former's pregnancy and new motherhood the last 2 seasons and the latter's back problems since mid-2004; with Jang's bad wrists, she, too, may face similar struggles in years to come. So it's still a toss-up who will define their generation, although the clock may be running out on Park's career, as 2009 is the last season her Kraft Nabisco Championship victory grants her entry into any tournament she wants to play as a Category 3 LPGA member.

Lorena Ochoa-Paula Creamer-Suzann Pettersen: It's not so much their position on the career money list as their ability to win in bunches that sets this trio apart from the rest of their generation. Death in the family limited Ochoa to 22 events and broke her $2M+/20+ top 10s/sub-70 scoring average streak at 2 (she "only" got 17 top 10s in '08), but she successfully defended her #1 status from a healthy Annika Sorenstam and was the most dominant player on the planet from March to May. Creamer and Pettersen are on the short list of players looking to unseat Ochoa in '09--along with veteran Cristie Kerr, Young Gun Ya Ni Tseng, and New Blood Ji-Yai Shin--but, man, even though this lead chase pack made up some ground on Ochoa in the summer and fall of '08, it would be an understatement to call what lies between her and them a gap. More like a chasm. Creamer would need a great season just to end up with half of Ochoa's career wins as of 2008, so imagine how fantastic her 2009 would have to be to get halfway to Ochoa's total at the end of it!

The LPGA's Top Rivalries: Battles of the Veteran Stars

Things have changed a lot since I last checked in on the LPGA's Battles of the Veteran Stars. Injuries and pregnancy have helped open up some significant gaps in the longest-standing rivalries on tour.

Cristie Kerr-Mi Hyun Kim: Kim's recovery from off-season knee surgery took much longer than expected, limiting her to the fewest starts in her 10-year career on the LPGA in '08 (21 events, when her previous low had been 27) and causing her to withdraw from 3 events. As a result, she failed to break the $500K barrier for the 1st time in her career, missing the top 10 on the money list for only the 3rd time and the top 25 for the 1st. Meanwhile, Kerr rode a late-season charge, capped off by her 11th career victory, to her 5th straight million-dollar season, 5th straight appearance on the top 10 of the money list, and 4th double-digit top 10 total in the past 5 seasons. Is it any surprise, then, that Kerr's lead on the career money list ballooned from less than $50K at mid-season to around $650K right now? The real question is whether Kim's recent wedding means that 2009 will be her last childless season or that her husband's reported plans to try for the '12 Olympics (he got a gold in judo in Athens in '04) mean they both plan to focus on sports for the next 4 years. Kerr is almost certainly going to break the $9M barrier in career winnings before Kim, but what about the $10M mark?

Sophie Gustafson-Maria Hjorth: Gustafson made the top 30 on the money list for the 4th straight time and the 7th time in the last 9 years, but despite being the 2nd-most lucrative of her career this past season was bittersweet, at best. She came into the Ginn Tribute one of the hottest players on tour and got to -20 through 57 holes, but completely imploded over her last 11 (Seon Hwa Lee, who beat Karrie Webb in a playoff thanks to a missed tap-in by the Hall of Famer, beat Gustafson by 12 strokes that Sunday). It would be unfair to say she never recovered from that late spring meltdown, as she got 2 top 3s in her last 7 events, but as she had no other top 10s the rest of the season, it would be unrealistic to say she just shrugged it off. Still, she's opened up one of her biggest leads in career winnings on Hjorth in recent memory (just over $200K), thanks in part to the fact that her rival was playing while pregnant for a good part of the '08 season, but mostly to the fact that she, too, got beat out by a Young Gun on a Sunday (Ya Ni Tseng in the LPGA Championship). If Gustafson maintains her top-30 pace in '09, she'll be the 1st to break the $5M barrier in career winnings....

Lorie Kane-Pat Hurst: Kane must have used up her Category 2 exemption, as her name still appears on LPGA.com's list of players, but unless she makes a run at breaking the $7M mark in career winnings, 2009 will be her last season on tour (I can't see her going to Q-School, can you?). Hurst, meanwhile, had the highest scoring average of her career since her rookie season, but still broke the $250K barrier for the 8th time in her last 9 seasons. She may not have any more top 10 seasons left in her, but she's practically a lock for the top 40 in '09, so expect her to keep chipping away at Kane's lead in career winnings. She's got the game to be playing for several more years.

Catriona Matthew-Rachel Hetherington-Laura Diaz: Hetherington is the clear leader with 8 career wins, but the race to the $6M mark in career winnings is on, as Matthew has already caught her and Diaz is closing fast. The way Hetherington's career has been going, she may have trouble making the top 80 in '09, while Matthew and Diaz remain legitimate top 30 threats.

Next in our series: a look at players in their prime years, productivity-wise.

[Update 1 (1/7/09, 2:02 pm): Hound Dog has found the official priority list for the upcoming season, and as I predicted, Lorie Kane exercised her only Category 2 exemption, so 2009 2010 will be her last stand (as well as Kelly Robbins, Beth Daniel, Betsy King, and Liselotte Neumann). Good luck to them!]

The LPGA's Top Rivalries: Clashes of the Titans

Let's continue this Mostly Harmless series by turning to another facet of the LPGA's top rivalries: how the active Hall of Famers' careers match up. Here's the capsule summary:

Karrie Webb (1996): 35 career LPGA wins (including 1 non-member win), 7 majors, 9 international wins, $14.31M in career LPGA winnings (#2), $.85M in 2008 in 20 LPGA events (#18)
Lorena Ochoa (2003): 24 career LPGA wins, 2 majors, $13.20M in career LPGA winnings (#3), $2.76M in 2008 in 22 LPGA events (#1)
Juli Inkster (1983): 31 career LPGA wins, 7 majors, 1 international win, $12.45M in career LPGA winnings (#4), $.44M in 2008 in 18 LPGA events (#38)
Se Ri Pak (1998): 24 career LPGA wins, 5 majors, 6 international wins, $10.15M in career LPGA winnings (#5), $.37M in 2008 in 17 LPGA events (#52)

With Annika Sorenstam not playing on the LPGA for at least the next season or two, this foursome stands alone. Not only are they the only players in LPGA history besides Sorenstam to have broken the $10M barrier in career winnings, they also notched the most victories during the Sorenstam Era. The only active player in their league is Laura Davies--she has only 1 fewer win in the Sorenstam Era than Inkster, 4 fewer career wins than Ochoa and Pak, and 2 more majors than Ochoa. Cristie Kerr is on track to join them in the 10 Million Dollar Club sometime in 2009, but she would need to double her career win total to even get close to them. And nobody else on the LPGA has gotten to double digits in the win column. (Paula Creamer should be the next one.)

Even though Ochoa zoomed past Pak on the money list in 2007, beating her to the $10M mark, and passed Inkster in 2008 with relative ease, I'm not so sure she'll have such an easy time beating Webb to the $15M mark or passing her in career winnings in 2009. True, since 2002 Webb hasn't been the same player who never finished outside the top 5 on the money list or had fewer than 2 wins and 12 top 10s per season. Even though she hasn't won or cracked the top 15 on the money list the past 2 seasons and can no longer be counted upon for consistent excellence, there's no reason she couldn't have another 2006 in '09. I'm sure she'd love to close out her LPGA career in Babe Zaharias-land, with 40+ wins and 10+ majors. It's not quite now or never for her, but she'll need a special season to make it possible.

While post-Solheim Cup retirement is looming for Inkster and time is running out for her to catch Patty Sheehan (35 wins, 6 majors) and Betsy King (34/6) in total victories, she still has the game to match Betsy Rawls's 8 majors. But it seems likely that Ochoa will pass her in career victories in 2010 if not in the upcoming season.

Pak, meanwhile, is coming off only the 2nd season in her career that she finished outside the top 16 on the money list. Her 2008 wasn't nearly as bad as her meltdown of 2005, but it marks the 5th in a row that she couldn't crack the top 10 on the money list or get double digits of top 10s, raising doubts that she'll ever again be the dominant player she was between 1998 and 2003. But Ochoa still trails her by 3 majors, so it's unlikely she'll be able to pass her in 2009. If maintaining or padding her lead on Ochoa in majors isn't enough motivation for Pak in 2009, she should take note that Cristie Kerr and Mi Hyun Kim are closing in on her on the career money list.

Ochoa, by contrast, is at the peak of her career. The only question is how many more seasons she can extend her reign as the Queen of the Hill in the world of women's golf. With a host of talented Young Guns and the Class of 2009--most notably Ya Ni Tseng, Ji-Yai Shin, Amy Yang, and Michelle Wie--looking to join Creamer, Suzann Pettersen, and Kerr in the lead chase pack, 2009 is likely to be her biggest challenge yet. Until 2010.

[Update 1 (1/22/09, 12:50 pm): Thomas Atkins, a regular commenter at Hound Dog's place, has put together an inflation-adjusted LPGA career winnings top 50. Ochoa still has a ways to go to get to #3 on that.]

The LPGA's Top Rivalries: Generation Gaps

All right, let's get the new year started right, golf-wise, by taking another look at the LPGA's top rivalries. We'll start this series of posts with an overview of the top money winners among the 5 LPGA generations that began their careers during the Sorenstam Era (1994-2008), plus the 1st new one that's looking to cut the Ochoa Era (2003-) short. In addition to career winnings and rank on the career money list, I also list these players' totals in wins and majors. I know--56 players are a lot to keep track of--but there are probably about 80 in all who could win any given week on the LPGA. Putting together my top 30 predictions is going to be even tougher this season than last!

1994-1996: The Sorenstam Generation

[1. Annika Sorenstam (1994) $22.57M (#1), 72/10]
2. Karrie Webb (1996) $14.31M (#2), 35/7
3. Lorie Kane (1996) $6.70M (#14), 4/0
4. Pat Hurst (1995) $6.16M (#15), 5/1
5. Catriona Matthew (1995) $5.49M (#25), 2/0
6. Carin Koch (1995) $4.36M (#33), 2/0
7. Wendy Ward (1996) $4.16M (#35), 4/0

1997-1999: The Pak Generation

1. Se Ri Pak (1998) $10.15M (#5), 24/5
2. Cristie Kerr (1997) $8.94M (#7), 11/1
3. Mi Hyun Kim (1999) $8.29M (#11), 8/0
4. Rachel Hetherington (1997) $5.59M (#23), 8/0
5. Laura Diaz (1999) $4.91M (#30), 2/0
6. Sophie Gustafson (1998) $4.55M (#31), 4/0
7. Maria Hjorth (1998) $4.33M (#34), 3/0
8. Karen Stupples (1999) $3.06M (#55), 2/1

2000-2002: Seoul Sisters

1. Jeong Jang (2000) $6.11M (#16), 2/1
2. Hee-Won Han (2001) $5.64M (#22), 6/0
3. Grace Park (2000) $5.28M (#27), 6/1
4. Candie Kung (2002) $3.95M (#37), 4/0
5. Angela Stanford (2001) $3.82M (#39), 3/0
6. Natalie Gulbis (2002) $3.64M (#42), 1/0
7. Gloria Park (2000) $3.24M (#51), 2/0

2003-2005: The Ochoa Generation

1. Lorena Ochoa (2003) $13.20M (#3), 24/2
2. Paula Creamer (2005) $5.82M (#19), 8/0
3. Suzann Pettersen (2003) $3.94M (#38), 5/1
4. Christina Kim (2003) $3.13M (#54), 2/0
5. Stacy Prammanasudh (2003) $2.74M (#64), 2/0
6. Meena Lee (2005) $2.35M (#73), 2/0
7. Shi Hyun Ahn (2004) $2.25M (#78), 1*/0 [non-member win]
8. Young Kim (2003) $2.18M (#81), 1/0
9. Brittany Lincicome (2005) $1.97M (#88), 2/0
10. Katherine Hull (2004) $1.61M (#106), 1/0

2006-2008: The Young Guns
[I include this generation's numbers of events, majors, wins, top 3s, top 10s, top 20s, and made cuts (along with made cut rate); *=non-member win.]

1. Seon Hwa Lee (2006) $3.18M (#52), 88/0/4/10/23/46/83 (.943)
2. Jee Young Lee (2006) $2.34M (#75), 78/0/1*/6/24/45/73 (.936)
3. Morgan Pressel (2006) $2.15M (#83), 75/1/2/6/22/38/65 (.867)
4. Julieta Granada (2006) $2.15M (#84), 83/0/1/5/10/21/56 (.675)
5. Angela Park (2007) $1.85M (#96), 55/0/0/6/15/22/50 (.910)
6. Ya Ni Tseng (2008) $1.75M (#100), 27/1/1/8/10/18/26 (.963)
7. Ai Miyazato (2006) $1.73M (#102), 69/0/0/4/17/26/56 (.812)
8. Inbee Park (2007) $1.52M (#111), 47/1/1/3/9/15/33 (.702)
9. Brittany Lang (2006) $1.52M (#112), 83/0/0/4/17/32/60 (.723)
10. In-Kyung Kim (2007) $1.23M (#136), 51/0/1/3/12/20/43 (.843)
11. Eun-Hee Ji (2007) $1.16M (#148), 32/0/1/4/10/13/27 (.844)
12. Na Yeon Choi (2008) $1.10M (#158), 27/0/0/3/9/18/27 (1.000)
13. Song-Hee Kim (2007) $1.06M (#160), 51/0/0/4/9/17/37 (.725)
14. Sun Young Yoo (2006) $1.05M (#165), 81/0/0/1/9/21/61 (.753)

2009-2011: New Blood

1. Ji-Yai Shin
2. Shiho Oyama
3. Stacy Lewis
4. Michelle Wie
5. Vicky Hurst
6. Mika Miyazato
7. Anna Nordqvist
8. Mindy Kim
9. M.J. Hur
10. Chella Choi

Happy New Year from Mostly Harmless

Going old school this year. Here's a little Heckyl and Jeckyl:



And Ojamajo Doremi welcoming in 2000:



Oh, and in case you haven't heard, there's going to be a new season of Full Metal Alchemist on Japanese TV:



So 2009 can't be all bad, right?