Monday, April 4, 2011

Kraft Nabisco Championship Sunday: Lewis Over Tseng!

Just under 2 months ago, Ya Ni Tseng completed a dominating victory in the ANZ RACV Ladies Masters by firing a final-round 68 that gave her a 4-shot margin over her nearest competitor, Stacy Lewis. Yesterday, Lewis got sweet revenge by firing a final-round 69 that gave her a 3-shot victory in the Kraft Nabisco Championship over a suddenly struggling Tseng. It was Lewis's long-awaited breakthrough victory on the LPGA--her 1st win and her 1st major!

I've heard people compare Lewis to Butler, which is actually a pretty good comparison if you keep in mind how long Butler's been very very good (2 NCAA title games in a row is no fluke!), but her win over the world #1 was not even close to the order of upset that Sandra Gal pulled off last week over world #2 Ji-Yai Shin. I had ranked Lewis #8 among the LPGA's winless back in January 2010, but if I had gotten my act together before the KNC I would have moved her much higher, as I had moved her to #11 among those without a major last week, with only Amy Yang, Song-Hee Kim, and Mika Miyazato ahead of her among the winless on that list.

The way Lewis was bombing the ball Sunday, I'm going to have to reassess my perception of her as a precision player. But I'll have to save my observations on the final round and on the rest of the leaderboard for later tonight. Too much to do and too little time!

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