And the Winner of the 2010 LPGA Prognostication Derby Is....

OK, so I shamed myself into spending a late night doing some elementary-school-level number-crunching and I'm ready to announce the winner of the 2010 LPGA Prognostication Derby. Who will follow former Waggle Room scribe Mulligan Stu in 2008 and Derby founder and namer Hound Dog in 2009 as the Mostly Harmless Best LPGA Predictor in 2010?

Hold your horses, there, buckaroo. Let's review how the title is determined. First, to identify the LPGA's top 30 in 2010, I averaged the results of the 5 major ranking systems: mine, Hound Dog's, the official money list, and the Rolex Rankings and the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index as of the week I did my Best of the LPGA ranking. I'll show my work so you can see who the consensus top 40 were on the LPGA in 2010:

RANK. NAME MH, $, HD, RR, GSPI = AVG

1. Kerr 3, 3, 2, 2, 1 = 2.2
2. Shin 5, 2, 4, 1, 3 = 3
3. Tseng 1, 4, 1, 5, 7 = 3.6
4. Choi 4, 1, 5, 4, 5 = 3.8
5. Pettersen 6, 5, 6, 3, 2 = 4.4
6. A Miyazato 2, 6, 3, 6, 8 = 5
7. IK Kim 7, 7, 7, 7, 6 = 6.8
8. SH Kim 8, 8, 8, 9, 4 = 7.4
9. Creamer 9, 10, 9, 11, 16 = 11
9. Wie 10, 9, 11, 10, 15 = 11
11. IB Park 11, 11, 10, 12, 13 = 11.4
12. Pressel 12, 13, 12, 17, 10 = 12.8
13. A Yang 13, 14, 13, 25, 11 = 15.2
14. Hull 14, 12, 14, 19, 23 = 16.4
15. Lincicome 15, 15, 15, 21, 18 = 16.8
16. Webb 17, 23, 17, 16, 14 = 17.4
17. Stanford 18, 18, 18, 20, 20 = 18.8
18. JY Lee 16, 19, 16, 38, 17 = 21.2
19. M Miyazato 19, 17, 20, 22, 29 = 21.4
20. Nordqvist 21, 24, 24, 14, 28 = 22.2
21. Yoo 20, 16, 21, 28, 48 = 26.6
22. Lewis 22, 21, 27, 37, 27 = 26.8
23. Kang 23, 22, 19, 46, 40 = 30
24. Munoz 26, 30, 28, 41, 39 = 32.8
25. Icher 25, 25, 25, 59, 32 = 33.2
26. Inkster 30, 29, 32, 50, 26 = 33.4
27. Hjorth 24, 20, 33, 23, 70 = 34
28. McPherson 28, 27, 34, 34, 49 = 34.4
29. HY Park 35, 34, 31, 43, 43 = 37.2
30. Pak 29, 32, 36, 31, 63 = 38.2

31. C Kim 27, 26, 35, 51, 54 = 38.6
32. M Lee 32, 33, 29, 74, 33 = 40.2
33. Hur 39, 31, 41, 44, 47 = 40.4
34. Matthew 37, 40, 42, 32, 59 = 42
35. Feng 31, 38, 26, 79, 37 = 42.2
36. Ueda 38, 44, 37, 45, 51 = 43
37. Lang 36, 35, 44, 48, 64 = 45.4
38. SH Lee 40, 42, 38, 72, 41 = 46.6
39. Gustafson 43, 45, 52, 33, 61 = 46.8
40. Kung 41, 36, 47, 71, 46 = 48.2

Next step is to apply the modified PakPicker formula I used the previous 2 years to Hound Dog's, rjay's, Verdant Garden's, Bill Jempty's, and my picks:

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).

OK, then, so here are the results:

1. rjay 703
2. The Constructivist 694
3. Hound Dog 657
4. Verdant Garden 655
5. Bill Jempty 609

Congrats to rjay! He had the most correct top 30 picks (21 to 20 for Hound Dog, Verdant Garden, and me), but what separated him and me from the pack this year was our relative accuracy, while what separated him from me was that he got more points out of the players I didn't pick (Stacy Lewis, Mika Miyazato, and Brittany Lincicome) than I got out of the players he didn't pick (Katherine Hull and Jee Young Lee), plus he undervalued Kerr and Pettersen less than I did. If I had substituted just about any of the 5 players in my next 10 for the right players in my top 30, I would have added a MH award to my season-long PakPicker win in 2010. By the way, the scoring was very high for everyone. Bill, who finished in the cellar this time around, would have been in the top 3 with that score in the previous 2 competitions, and everyone else scored well enough to win either of them. Nice pickin', y'all!

All right, then, I'm so due for 2011! Watch out for me!