Monday, February 11, 2008

2008 LPGA Preview: Finally, the First Event of the Season!

Following up on my challenge to Ron Sirak to join the PakPickers at the Seoul Sisters discussion board and put his rep where his mouth is, I'm going to post my picks for the LPGA's inaugural SBS Open at Turtle Bay here at Mostly Harmless, along with my reasoning.

The way the PakPickers competition works is that you try to predict the top 12 (in rank order) for each event in the season you care to. You get three alternates in case any of your picks unexpectedly fail to start an event, you get points in each event based on how close you come to being right, and, for every event in which you finish in the top 10 among the Pakpickers, you accumulate season points.

OK, so for each event I look over who's in it, recent tournament history, the previous weeks' results, and my latest Best of the LPGA and Young Guns (formerly Super Soph) rankings--and then I consult the patented 100-Yen Nishijin Mostly Harmless Crystal Ball.

The beginning of the season is easy. I take my predicted top 12 for 2008, remove those on it not in the SBS field, look at who's played the course well and who's playing well coming into the event, and make my guesses. Like so.

1. Annika Sorenstam
2. Paula Creamer
3. Seon Hwa Lee
4. Ji-Yai Shin
45. Stacy Prammanasudh
56. Jee Young Lee
67. Hee-Won Han
78. Angela Park
89. Eun-Hee Ji
910. Morgan Pressel
101. Natalie Gulbis
112. Jeong Jang
12. Pat Hurst

Alts: Pat Hurst, In-Kyung Kim, Ya Ni Tseng, Cristie Kerr


And there you have it. I'm trying to dethrone Hound Dog this year. Think you can do it? If so, don't forget to register before trying to post your own picks....

[Update: Here's Hound Dog's preview!]

[Update 2/12/08: Hound Dog points out Ji-Yai Shin got a sponsor's exemption! Wow!]

6 comments:

Hound Dog said...

I was just getting my SBS picks together when I stumbled across this post. Your selection process looks similar to mine, minus the two live chickens and a goat.

Seriously, I put more weight on last year's event in the first couple of weeks because I've got no recent history of Who's Hot or Not. Otherwise, my process is about 40% Top 30 list, 40% Who's Hot and 20% last year's event (if it's at the same venue). There, all my secrets spilled.

The Constructivist said...

Do it on your blog and I'll respect you! Who reads comments on my golf posts here besides you, me, Mulligan Stu, and spyder? (Lurkers delurk!)

Hound Dog said...

You're right, I should. Then five more people would be enlightened!

The Constructivist said...

Hey, don't be too hard on yourself. At least 6! Are there any other good LPGA bloggers than the ones we already know about out there?

The Florida Masochist said...

The constructivist wrote-

"Who reads comments on my golf posts here besides you, me, Mulligan Stu, and spyder? (Lurkers delurk!)"

You forgot me.

Bill

The Constructivist said...

My bad, Bill! That would make5 of us if spyder would just take up the privileges of authorship here!

I am trying to get Seoul Sisters founder HappyFan into Blogoramaville....

There's gotta be more. I like Golf Girl and all, but her niche is everything but the actual play on the tour....