It was the right day to be playing the Lake Region and Huntington Hills courses yesterday in Futures Tour Q-School. While 2nd-round leader Tiffany Joh played defensively on the windy, hazardous, large-greened Golf Club at Bridgewater, holding steady with a solid even-par 72, lots of players made big moves, including your new leader Danielle Mills and new-to-the-top-10 Lauren Doughtie, who both shot 69s at the Lake Region. Mallory Blackwelder took advantage of Huntington Hills to fire the low round of the week, a bogey-free 66 with her dad on the bag, as Lisa Mickey notes in her daily wrap (which also has great notes on players' hopes for the effects on their home countries of golf getting into the Olympics and a Caroline Westrup car trouble anecdote). Mariajo Uribe's 68 at Ridgewood Lakes may have been the most impressive round of the day, however, as only 3 others broke 70 on the course that day.
Looking ahead, Mills, Kueny, Joh, Blackwelder, Bavaird, Connelly, Hwang, and Hill get to play courses today where people have gone low this week. Let's see what they make of the opportunity. The top 90 and ties after today's round get to have a final-round shootout at the Lake Region course on Friday
[Note: B=Bridgewater, H=Huntington Hills, L=Lake Region, R=Ridgewood Lakes]
1st/-9 Danielle Mills (67R-71B-69H)
T2/-8 Laura Kueny (68R-70B-70H), Tiffany Joh (67L-69R-72B)
4th/-7 Chelsea Curtis (68B-71H-70L)
T5/-5 Mallory Blackwelder (71R-74B-66H), Laura Bavaird (71R-69B-71H), Rebecca Flood (69B-72H-70L)
8th/-4 Stephanie Connelly (69L-70R-73B)
T9/-3 Lauren Doughtie (71B-73H-69L), Kitty Hwang (70R-72B-71H)
T11/-2 Nannette Hill (72R-70B-72H), Leanne Bowditch (73B-67H-74L), Michelle Yang (71H-68L-75R)
T19/-1 Mariajo Uribe (71H-76L-68R), Jane Rah (74B-70H-71L)
There's a big gap emerging between the top 20 and everyone else. It'll be interesting to see who handles the pressure of trying to make the cut. Go Oui!
T38/+3 Miriam Nagl (76L-73R-70B)
T86/+8 Cindy Miller (74H-74L-76R)
T99/+9 Maiya Tanaka (73B-77H-75L), Virada Nirapathpongporn (73H-75L-77R)
T120/+11 Kelly Nakashima (78B-77H-72L)
T131/+12 Rebecca Kim (74H-75L-79R)
T180/+17 Mallory Hetzel (77B-78H-78L), Woori Shin (75L-76R-82B)
T190/+18 Eri Miyake (77L-79R-78B)
T199/+19 Elena Kurokawa (77H-79L-79R)
T226/+23 Mariko Makabe (76H-82L-81R)
T242/+27 Jillian Fraccola (76L-83R-83B)
T254/+30 Paula Pearson-Tucker (86B-77H-83L)
T264/+34 Yukiko Ishizaka (86R-81B-83H)
WD Kira Meixner (79H-79L-WD)
Given that everyone who finishes 4 rounds gets some kind of status on the FT in 2010, I'm wondering if in the future the tour leadership ought to make breaking 80 in 1 of your 1st 3 rounds a requirement to make it into the 4th. I can understand about giving players opportunities to improve been now and next March, but it doesn't seem too much to ask of an aspiring pro to do this.
2 comments:
Agreed, kicking out anyone who has a round of 87 (+15) or worse is a step in the right direction, especially after several fist-round scores in the 90s; but even that leaves open the possibility of someone being 50-something over par for the tournament by shooting 4 rounds in the mid-80s and getting status next year simply because there are less than 275 players posting 4 rounds. Such a player has little chance of making a cut, so why give them status? I'm guessing the answer has something to do with economics, especially since the winner's prize this week is less than the entry fee for members, and less than half the entry fee for non-members.
Once you've paid your entry fee to Q-School, it's gone. So getting kicked out after 3 rounds for failing to break 80 wouldn't affect the FT's bottom line. It's not like it would affect that many entrants and it might keep those who don't think they can meet that criterion from even deciding to enter.
Whether a player who gets very low status membership would want to pay the membership fee is another story. I guess there are enough optimists out there for this to be a viable business model. But the actual membership lists for past years haven't been miles long. So I don't think this Q-School will produce very different results from previous ones in that regard.
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