If you happened to look at the Round 1 pairings for the Wegmans, you might just have noticed that the tournament organizers decided not to put Cristie Kerr in the "America's Sweethearts" group of Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, and Natalie Gulbis. So what did the best American female golfer do but rattle off 7 birdies on her way to a 66 today? (Gulbis, by contrast, who's coming off an injury, could only manage a 78.) Maybe it was her strong finish in a late May KLPGA event (after buying a new putter in the pro shop after a particularly bad putting day!) that inspired her recent run of good play, but maybe, just maybe, the pairing had something to do with today's hot round. Not that playing with Karrie Webb and Liselotte Neumann is a bad thing--just that it might have been fun for her to play head-to-head for two rounds against her top 2 American competitors.
With a 1-shot lead on Alena Sharp (who shouldn't be around on the back 9 Sunday, given her history this season of failing to shoot more than one sub-70 round per tournament), a 2-shot lead on the ubiquitous Suzann Pettersen, and a 3-shot lead on the world's best female golfer Lorena Ochoa, the resurgent Brittany Lincicome, and the scrappy Mi Hyun Kim--not to mention a ton of people who could get themselves into contention with strong second rounds, like Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Angela Stanford, Jimin Kang, Young Kim, and Becky Morgan (all at -2), or Jeong Jang, Seon Hwa Lee, Jee Young Lee, Meena Lee, and Catriona Matthew (who had many different ways of getting, or falling back, to -1)--it's much too soon for Kerr to start celebrating. With her second 66 in a row (the last one leapfrogged her into her second top 20 in as many majors this year) and only her second sub-70 Thursday of the season, she may finally be making a move into the upper reaches of the money list where she belongs--despite her cold this week. With Meaghan Francella, Laura Davies, and Shi Hyun Ahn not in the tournament, Stacy Prammanasudh out with an injury, Julieta Granada (77), Juli Inkster (76), Angela Park (76), Silvia Cavalleri (76), Kyeong Bae (76), and Na On Min (76) in danger of missing the cut, and Pat Hurst (74), Nicole Castrale (74), Sherri Steinhauer (74), Sarah Lee (73), Se Ri Pak (73), Ai Miyazato (73), and Karrie Webb (72) trailing by far, Kerr stands to pass a lot of people and is not in much danger of being passed by anyone. In fact, she's now in the best position to sneak into the ADT Championship among those playing in the Wegmans this week--it's the last tournament that counts toward the first half of the season's point total (the top 11 point-getters who haven't already qualified by winning one of four designated tournaments get in). She says she needs a top 2 finish to do it....
So good luck, Cristie. Hope the weather holds up for you the way it did today (the thunderstorms waited until she finished her round). I'll be rooting for Moira and Ai-chan to get into red figures after the end of Friday's round, but I'll be rooting for you to get that top 2.
By the way, for those with the time and inclination, I recommend checking out the webcasts from Rochester and letting the tournament organizers know what you think of them.
[Update 6/23/07: Because I'm making the big bucks doing all this LPGA blogging, I thought I'd check out a few of the webcasts. The best, IMHO, is the segment wth Lisa Fernandez archived at the Thursday 3 pm slot. Turns out she's a very good friend of Prammanasudh and got in the tournament because Stacy's thumb was bothering her, she didn't want to risk injuring it severely the week before the U.S. Women's Open, and she knew her withdrawing on the first tee would get Lisa in the field. But that's not the best part of the interview--the best part is Fernandez telling what Thursday morning life as the first alternate in a LPGA event is like. Well, actually, it's the fifth alternate, but...just check out the first few minutes of the webcast and you'll be hooked.]
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