I'm not sure what the Futures Tour battlefield exemption actually means any more. Mina Harigae earned it with her 3rd FT win earlier this season and at the time she expressed interest in playing in the CVS LPGA Challenge (formerly the Longs Drugs) this week. Now I see from the field list that Amanda Blumenherst and Kim Welch have been named sponsor exemptions and that Harigae's name doesn't even appear on the list of alternates (Michelle Ellis is at the head of that list). I assume the tournament organizers and the LPGA are making her Monday qualify. But why? Maybe my reading of the priority status system is completely wrong, but shouldn't Harigae have been put in Category 13 and therefore been moved to the head of the reordered status list--right ahead of Haeji Kang at #152 and well ahead of Ellis (who's in the high 160s)? Is anyone at the LPGA office paying attention to their own membership and entry rules?
[Update 1 (9/22/09, 10:22 am): Apparently I need to be asking Harigae herself that question; a source from the Futures Tour tells me that Mina didn't commit to playing this week, for unknown reasons.]
9 comments:
Samsung was the 21st event of the season: the new list hasn't been released yet as of this writing and in any event won't come into force until next week's Navistar, so that's where you would see the revisions pop up, including Mina's.
Kevin
Huh????????????????
Nowhere did I see in the original wording of the categories that a 3-time FT winner would have to wait until a status reordering to start getting into regular full-field tournaments.
I'd find it more plausible that Harigae decided not to enter the tournament than that parody of bureaucratic technicalitese was in effect.
Con - you're a married man - you know as well as anybody that just because she said she might be interested in playing the CVS a month ago doesn't mean she was interested in playing it last week...or yesterday... :-)
We don't know for sure that she wasn't invited, but I'd bet Cat is right about her playing in the Navistar as her first start.
Hmm, heard from a source in the DFT that Mina didn't commit to playing this week, for unknown reasons.
to quote the great Emily Litella..."Nevermind" :-D
Yeah, maybe next time I'd better just email my source 1st before shooting from the hip like that, eh? Or would that be breaking a blogger's code of ethics?
Happens to even the very best from time to time...just print a retraction...but put it in a post from last April. :-)
My 1st Harigae post here was back in January:
http://mlyhlss.blogspot.com/2009/01/look-for-mina-harigae-on-futures-tour.html
I'd better go update that one now!
They did FINALLY update the Priority List. Given that there are now only 27 events this season they list this as the Final Reshuffle. Analysis, please.
http://www.lpga.com/content/09PRIORITYLIST.pdf
Kevin
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