OK, I have to admit I knew yesterday morning that Ai Miyazato had made it to the Sweet 16 in the HSBC Women's World Match Play Championship, thanks to Japanese tv morning news editors' decision to show a 15-second clip of her wins in the first two rounds (after a much longer story on teenage sensation Ryo Ishikawa blowing up at a junior tournament in California). I shouldn't complain, as Sergio and the gang got no play at some minor tournament in Europe. In fact, with the top JLPGA players deciding not to compete in the HSBC--they decided to play here instead (just out of spite I'll be cheering for Na Zhang to extend her 5-shot lead tomorrow afternoon, although I may miss the actual action, as we have plans for another farewell get-together that could turn out to be an all-day affair)--I shouldn't have been surprised that Ai-chan got the micro-story treatment from the Japanese media. We'll see in a few hours how many seconds Ai-chan's third-round win over Christina Kim nets her on Sunday morning tv in Japan!
While I'm waiting for the other matches to finish up--and rooting for Super Sophs Seon Hwa Lee, Jee Young Lee, and Meaghan Francella to join Ai-chan in the Elite 8--let me offer my own recap of the first two rounds. And then pick up with the third- and fourth-round action.
Round 1
Since I spotlighted the Super Sophs in my first diary entry over at Waggle Room, I'll lead with them here at Mostly Harmless.
The best of the best Super Sophs Morgan Pressel got beat by Birdie Kim. Again. I wonder if losing to a miracle bunker hole-out in a major feels worse than bogeying your last two holes to hand a hard-fought match to your rival. Only Pressel knows.
Let's look at some Super Soph comebacks to get the taste of that upset out of our mouths.
Jee Young Lee was +4 over her first three holes and (no surprise) 3 down to Karin Sjodin, but she responded with two birdies on the next two holes to get back within 1. She oscillated between 1 and 2 down over the next 8 holes, but thanks to Sjodin's 2nd consecutive bogey pulled to all square with 4 holes left to play. The home stretch started badly for her, as she bogeyed the 15th while Sjodin birdied it, but a birdie on 16 got her back even with Sjodin. The match came down to the 18th and Lee sealed the victory with a birdie. Huge comeback for Lee; big disappointment for Super Soph in Waiting Sjodin.
Seon Hwa Lee also made a great comeback. At 3 down after Diana D'Alessio made her third birdie of the day on the 14th (with no bogeys), you figure Lee is out of it, right? Nope. Lee wins all 4 closing holes, 3 of them with birdies. She didn't get Rookie of the Year in 2006 for nothing.
Hye Jung Choi was +2 through 5 and lucky to be only 1 down to Juli Inkster. But 3 consecutive birdies and an Inkster bogey on 10 gave Choi a 3-hole lead that she wouldn't relinquish.
OK, enough about comebacks. How about Super Sophs who took control of their matches? Well, there were only two.
Meaghan Francella jumped out to an early lead on Meena Lee--at -2 over her first 10 holes, she was 4 up. And even though she was +1 over the next 6 holes and Lee was -2, which got Lee to only 1 down with 2 to play, Francella withstood the charge and won the match with a birdie on the par-3 17th. A big upset for the injured Super Soph. Perhaps a sign that her rib muscle is finally healed?
Unlike Francella, Ai Miyazato got off to only a solid start in her match with Becky Morgan--both were even through 7 and all square. But then Ai-chan took over with birdies on 8, 10, and 14, the last of which sealed the deal, thanks to Morgan's bogeys on 11 and 12. Golf is a streaky game to begin with and match play is Windex-proof.
Tell it to Julieta Granada, who got a little bit unlucky against Reilley Rankin. If you're -5 through your first 10 holes, you don't usually expect to be only 3 up, but Rankin practically matched Granada birdie for birdie on the front. Then disaster struck, as a combination of 3 Granada bogeys and 3 Rankin birdies led to losses on 6 straight holes and an early exit for the career money leader among the Super Sophs. It's hard to see such a tough loss as a positive, but I think Granada's game is coming back online for the second half of the this season, just as it did in 2006. You heard it here first: her slump is over.
The same can't be said for Brittany Lang, who was +3 through 10 and 4 down to Lindsey Wright, when a Lang birdie and then a Wright double bogey got her back to only 2 down with 6 left to play. But doubling 14 and bogeying 15 ensured that Lang's slump continues. That Wright beat Annika Sorenstam to make it to the Sweet 16 and took Jeong Jang to extra holes in the third round is unlikely to make Lang feel any better.
Perhaps the only person who feels worse than Lang is Kyeong Bae, who bogeyed the 19th hole to lose to Angela Stanford. I say "perhaps" because a glitch in the HSBC site's software is not letting me look over the first 18 holes of the match!
Besides the Super Sophs, the most interesting thing about Round 1 is trying to figure out if Janice Moodie beating KLPGA #1 Ji-Yai Shin, rookie Charlotte Mayorkas beating world #2 Karrie Webb, or Amy Hung destroying U.S. Women's Open champion Cristie Kerr is the biggest upset of the day. It's a tough call, but given how bad Shin and Kerr played, I think the nod has to go to Mayorkas, who only went -4 over her last 6 holes (against Webb's -2!) for the win. When neither golfer recorded a bogey and each was -5 on the day, you know Mayorkas earned her win.
Round 2
Here's how crazy golf is. Reilly Rankin may well have been the hottest golfer coming into Friday (even hotter than Lorena Ochoa, Stacy Prammanasudh, Ai Miyazato, Young Kim, Hye Jung Choi, and Charlotte Mayorkas), so of course she went +7 through 11 and was lucky to be only 4 down to Carin Koch. Like Choi, who was +5 through her first 6 holes, she made an early exit Friday. In fact, of the golfers who blistered the course on Thursday, only Miyazato advanced to the Sweet 16 with another back 9 surge, this time against British Open champion Sherri Steinhauer.
Joining Ai-chan in the Sweet 16 were Thursday's comeback kids, the fighting Lees. Jee Young used 4 birdies to destroy Nicole Castrale while Seon Hwa just played less badly than Janice Moodie.
Meanwhile, Meaghan Francella and Jeong Jang were beneficiaries of uncharacteristic late-round collapses by #1 in the world Lorena Ochoa (+4 over her last 10 holes to blow a 2-up lead) and #1 rookie Angela Park (+4 over her last 7 holes to blow a 2-up lead), respectively. And other 2007 stars like Paula Creamer, Se Ri Pak, Suzann Pettersen, and Stacy Prammanasudh had similarly lackluster over-par performances, losing to Maria Hjorth, Christina Kim, Rachel Hetherington, and Pat Hurst. So in the end it's a toss-up who had the toughest loss--although again I have to single out Charlotte Mayorkas, who lost on the third playoff hole to Laura Diaz, over her top contender Annika Sorenstam (who ran into an incandescent Lindsey Wright).
After the carnage was complete, 4 Super Sophs found themselves in the Sweet 16. With only Mi Hyun Kim ranked higher than Ai-chan, only Kim and Jeong Jang ranked higher than Jee Young Lee, and only Kim, Jang, and Pat Hurst ranked higher than Seon Hwa Lee, they had to be among the favorites to win the tournament.
Round 3
Amazingly, all 4 Super Sophs advanced to the Elite 8! Ai-chan did it in style, outplaying Christina Kim on the 5th through 11th holes and holding on for a 2 & 1 win. Jee Young Lee and Meaghan Francella, by contrast, relied on late collapses by their older competitors Laura Diaz (+2 over her final 4 holes after fighting back to draw even with Lee) and Pat Hurst (+3 over her last 5 holes to squander a 1-up lead), respectively, while Seon Hwa Lee again played just a little less badly than her opponent (this time Laura Davies, who was +5 over her first 13 holes to spot Lee a 3-hole cushion).
Like Ai-chan, Mi Hyun Kim is playing good golf through her first 3 rounds. She took advantage of early and late mistakes by Rachel Hetherington to cruise to a 3-up victory. The same can't be said of Jeong Jang, who lost an early 2-hole lead on Lindsey Wright after bogeying the 6th and 7th holes, then parred out while Wright made a bogey and two birdies, the last on the 17th to give her a 1-up win. Like Wright, Amy Hung is getting fitted for a Cinderella dress, as she took Carin Koch to the 19th hole and won it with a par. It took Maria Hjorth a birdie on her 19th hole to defeat Angela Stanford and continue her run of grueling victories over higher-ranked opponents.
So, heading into the quarterfinal matches (which are going on right now), there's a decent chance we could see an all-Super Soph Final 4. Jee Young Lee has the toughest draw, facing off against Mi Hyun Kim, while Seon Hwa Lee has to face the giant-killing Lindsey Wright and Meaghan Francella has to face down the battle-hardened (but perhaps exhausted) Maria Hjorth. On paper, Ai-chan has the easiest draw, facing Amy Hung, but you never want to have to beat the Cinderella in the field.
Round 4
Mi Hyun Kim is 2 up on Jee Young Lee through 4, thanks to a Kim birdie on 1 and a Lee bogey on 4. If Kim hadn't matched Lee's bogey on 3, she'd have an even bigger lead.
Seon Hwa Lee and Lindsey Wright are trading bogeys--each has 2 in their first 4 holes and they're all square.
Meaghan Francella also has a pair of bogeys to start her round yet is only 1 down to Maria Hjorth after 4.
Ai-chan bogeyed the 5th to fall one behind Amy Hung.
More at the end of the round!
[Update 1 (6:45 am): Well, the girls woke up early, but not early enough for me to catch any of the quarterfinal action (online, that is). This is where I get mad at Japanese tv, as three of my favorite golfers made it to the final 4--but only two of the Super Sophs. It's Ai-chan with the easier draw, against a hot Maria Hjorth, and Seon Hwa Lee with the tougher one, against Mi Hyun Kim. Hjorth and Lee got into the final 4 the easy way--neither Francella nor Wright played well. But Amy Hung more than hung in there with Ai-chan (who needed a birdie on the last hole for the win) and Kim withstood a mid-round run by Jee Young Lee (who threw an eagle and a couple of birdies at Kim to erase an early 2-hole deficit). But in the end the two steadiest players in the tournament gutted out tough wins and have to be the favorites in their semifinal matches.
If Kim wins this thing, it's possible she could knock off 3 of the top 4 Super Sophs on the way to doing it. But I'll be rooting for a Seon Hwa Lee-Ai Miyazato shootout in the final round.]
[Update 2 (8:08 am): Well, no Ai-chan that I could find on early morning Japanese tv. Which is probably better than the U.S. webby coverage. ESPN.com and SI.com's partners both took a long time to update their sites and during that span put news of the woman Tiger plunked with his drive ahead of their outdated HSBC stories. CBSSportsLine.com once again had the best golf coverage among the non-specialist sites, but even their coverage was weak, focusing on the white upstarts and practically ignoring the Asian stars. True, Meaghan Francella deserved to be a big story and whoever beat her on her home turf deserved a lot of credit and attention. But the implicit Great White Hope focus on Hjorth over three players more highly ranked than she is simply ridiculous. If, as Geoff Shackleford and Mulligan Stu are emphasizing, only hard-core LPGA fans (guilty as charged) are paying attention to the HSBC, golf writers should understand that Mi Hyun Kim is a huge name in women's golf, Seon Hwa Lee is the former rookie of the year, and Ai Miyazato is a huge name worldwide. Scott Nicholson's story made it to Golfweek's site, as well, which means that prospective women's pro golf fans are treated to the worst golf sportswriting of the week. Nice. Hope The Florida Masochist gets on this.]
[Update 3 (8:16 am): Nicholson's AP story made it to ESPN.com before SI.com--way to go, Golf Digest. Still in the middle of kids' tv, so no Japanese media watch news yet.]
[Update 4 (8:20 am): OK, enough complaining. Alex Myers at Match Madness blogs for The Journal News (Francella's home newspaper, which hosts her blog, too) and his coverage of the HSBC is worth reading. Plus he's an Ai-chan fan. So go there now!]
[Update 5 (7/23/07, 9:47 am): Forgot to mention that despite giving up her six-shot lead in the JLPGA event on Sunday, Na Zhang recovered to beat Sakura Yokomine by birdieing the par 5 she bogeyed to fall back into the playoff in the first place. And I got to see it live at my friend's house, pulling him away from a sumo event. Turns out the HSBC was being aired on cable in Japan, but of course we're not paying for cable in Fukuoka and it was 4 am in NY when I had access to my friend's cable. In any case, I hope this shows Yokomine, Momoko Ueda (who finished 5th), Mi-Jeong Jeon, and Shiho Oyama that they would have been better off playing in the HSBC.]
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