How's Paula? Creamer Pulls Out of SunCoast Series Event

It's only the pre-season for the LPGA's stars, so let's not make too much of this, but this coming week was supposed to be Paula Creamer's competitive debut for 2010. It's not, though. She's not in the pairings sheet for the SunCoast Series's West Orange event.

Of course, the 1st thought that occurs to my suspicious mind is that this is an early indicator of the state of her health this coming season, which, my regulars will no doubt recall, was the main reason I ranked her only the 3rd-most likely player to get off my list of the best on the LPGA without a major. Good thing for Paula her 1st published interview of 2010 was with Mike Walker--she didn't have to answer any tough questions about her health from him.

With Paula sitting this week out, the biggest story of the 1st round will be the pairing of the previous 2 weeks' winners. Meredith Duncan won at Rio Pinar and Maria Hjorth at Forest Lake, each without the other in the field. I'm also quite interested to see how Hannah Yun handles playing with Stacy Lewis and Haeji Kang. She's gone from being paired with Moira Dunn and Meredith Duncan 2 weeks ago to playing with Maria Hjorth, Jane Park, and Sandra Gal last week, and has gone over par only once in her 1st 6 competitive rounds of 2010. In going under par twice, she hasn't yet broken 70, but she's been playing solid golf, finishing 3rd (+1) and T5 (-1). Both Dave Andrews and Happy Fan have identified Yun as a player to watch on the Futures Tour, so let's see how she plays in the biggest field of the pre-season thus far.

[Update 1 (2:48 am): About that Hjorth-Duncan showdown...let's just say their recent tweets aren't raising my expectations for what they'll bring to the course this week!]

[Update 2 (6:30 pm): From Creamer's tweets today, she doesn't sound at all concerned about her health. She's focused on going out to watch the Vikers-Saints game. Phew!]