Thursday, June 26, 2014

My Picks for the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship

Like Lexi Thompson, I was unable to repeat my Kraft Nabisco Championship victory--hers for real, mine in Seoul Sisters.com's PakPicker competition--at the U.S. Women's Open.  In fact, I broke a top-10 streak with some bad predicting.  So this time around, instead of relying on a lot of statistical analyses, I'm going to go with past results (see parentheses for finishes from 2013, 2012, and all the way back to 2008 for each of my picks), plus lots of guessing and hoping!

1. Choi Na Yeon (T17, T23, T10, T9, T7, T8)
2. Ko (T4)
3. Lewis, Stacy (T4, T19, T8, T9, T21, T49)
4. Park Inbee (1, T4, T38, 4, MC, 10)
5. Ryu (2, T10)
6. Wie (MC, MC, MC, 2, T27)
7. Yang (T17, 7, 2, T65, MC)
8. Creamer (T7, T28, T8, T14, T63)
9. Pettersen (T7, T14, T10, T23)
10. Nordqvist (T43, T8, T48, T9)
11. Miyazato Ai (T11, 1, 3, T9, T10, T4)
12. Miyazato Mika (3, T2, T22, 3, T63)

Alts:  Shin (T17, T10, MC); Thompson (T43); Tseng (T57, MC, 1, 1, T14)

Yes, yes, I know precisely how terribly the Miyazatos have been playing in 2014, but what better place for them to start turning their seasons around?  So what if I'm passing over Shanshan Feng, Hee Young Park, Chella Choi, and Catriona Matthew?  They don't have very stellar records at Pinnacle Country Club.  Cristie Kerr, Angela Stanford, and Meena Lee have had some very good finishes here between them, but they haven't had many.  The players I most regret leaving off the list are actually Azahara Munoz and Ariya Jutanugarn.  But I'd love to see Ya Ni start a real comeback in Walmart country this week, so I'm picking her to make the top 15....

2 comments:

Colin N.Z said...

I like the start grouping of Ko, Korda and Lewis. No better player to feed off than Lewis and we know what happened the last time Lydia had the opportunity to do just that. I see a couple of notable players have opted to skip this tournament and get to Europe early for next week’s Ladies European Masters in prep for the WBO. Be good Bruce to see you next week do a LPGA style preview for the LEM. I guess you will also be following it. Ariya is going to be pushing it if she's around all weekend.

Colin N.Z said...

For those without the GC you should find some delayed and live coverage streamed here.

http://nfl-streaming.tv/golftv.html