Corona Championship Predictions

Maybe it's time to lose that 100-Yen Mostly Harmless Crystal Ball that I picked up in Nishijin last year. It's been nothing but trouble for me on a week-to-week basis. But all that's going to change this week, as the Corona Championship features Lorena Ochoa, Hee-Won Han, Sophie Gustafson, Brittany Lincicome, Carin Koch, Lorie Kane, and 100 players few people have ever heard of, including defending champion Silvia Cavalleri. If this week isn't a natural advantage for me, I don't know what is. So here goes!

1. Ochoa
2. Han Hee-Won
3. Park Inbee
4. Choi Na Yeon
5. Oh Ji Young
6. Blomqvist
7. Gustafson
8. Lang [Update 4/9/08: She dropped out of the field.] Park Hee Young
9. Stahle
10. Dunn
11. Ahn Shi Hyun [Update 4/9/08: She dropped out of the field.] Koch
12. Moodie

Alts: Cavalleri, Sharp, Yang Amy

Moira's best finish last year was a T18 here, but her putting woes this season made me hesitate to pick her this week. Still, I decided to bite the bullet--let's call it momentum from her breaking the $2M mark in career winnings this past weekend. Speaking of career milestones, Brittany Lang could become the 6th in her class to break the $1M mark with at least a 7th-place finish this week.

As for others I'm rooting for, I'd love to see Amy Yang and Virada Nirapathpongporn have great weeks--they're very low on the non-exempt list, so any good finish increases their odds of getting into future tournaments. I'll also be following the play of this past week's Futures Tour winner Leah Wigger, along with South Africa's Ashleigh Simon, China's Shanshan Feng, Canada's Alena Sharp, and New York's Danielle Downey.

Here's hoping ESPN Deportes televises this event and puts the video online, as they did the last time the LPGA was in Mexico this season. (The tournament site says it's going to be on ESPN 2 in the evenings; on a side note, the course map on the site is tiny but interesting--between the water and the elevation, anything can happen, even this week.) I have a sinking feeling that Erica Blasberg and Anna Rawson getting into contention may be the only thing that takes the golfing world's eyes away from Augusta for just a moment...unless Lorena and Tiger shoot matching scores each hole or something weird like that.

[Update: Hound Dog's preview notes that this field is much weaker than the MasterCard Classic's and names some possible fluke winners I hadn't thought of....]