North Texas LPGA Shootout Saturday: Can Carlota Ciganda Break Through?

Thanks to a 6-birdie 66 today, Carlota Ciganda enters the final round of the North Texas LPGA Shootout with a 2-shot lead on world #1 Inbee Park and the leader-for-the-previous-2-rounds Caroline Masson, while world #3 Na Yeon Choi fired a bogey-free 66 of her own to pull within 3 shots of the lead.

Ciganda has been bombing it (and spraying it) around Las Colinas, averaging 270 yards off the tee but averaging fewer than 5 fairways per round, yet that hasn't been stopping her from hitting a lot of greens (almost 14 per round) and making a lot of putts.  She was -11 with 6 holes left to play today and that's where she ended up after bogeying the 14th and birdieing the 17th.  Park, too has been less accurate off the tee than usual, but has missed only 7 greens in 54 holes and finally got her putter going on the back 9 today, where she fired a bogey-free 31.  Masson opened her round today with a double and when she bogeyed the par-3 6th she had played her previous 10 holes, dating back to the end of yesterday's round, in +5 (her lone birdie of that slide coming on the previous par 3)--but she showed great resilience in playing her last 12 holes bogey-free and -4 to join Park at -9 for the week.  Choi, meanwhile, is on a bogey-free run of 35 holes and counting (she's made only 2 bogeys and 1 double all week, while missing only 9 greens in regulation), a stretch in which she moved from E to -8.  If she really gets her putter tomorrow, she's going to win.

That's not to say it's guaranteed to be a 4-player race for the top tomorrow.  There are 4 players at -6, from world #6 So Yeon Ryu and Class of 2006er Jee Young Lee to low American Christina Kim and the underrated Karine Icher, all of whom fired 67s except for Ryu, who eagled the par-5 3rd and still hasn't made a bogey since the 6th hole on Thursday, but could manage only 1 more birdie the rest of the day (I have a feeling those 37 putts she took in the 1st round will have dug her too big a hole to climb out of in the last 18 holes of the tournament).  With Suzann Pettersen, In-Kyung Kim, and Shanshan Feng at -5, and Ya Ni Tseng, Brittany Lincicome, and Moriya Jutanugarn at -4, we have decent odds that someone from well back could go on a serious tear and put some big-time pressure on the 4 leaders.

There sure are a lot of American flags at -2 and -3, from Stacy Lewis, Paula Creamer, Cristie Kerr, Angela Stanford, and Kristy McPherson to Lexi Thompson, Jessica Korda, and Mo Martin to Moira Dunn, Jennifer Johnson, Mindy Kim, and Kathleen Ekey, but they'll need miracles on Sunday to have a hope in...uh, North Texas.

Oh, and for what it's worth, the cut line for the top 50 and ties came in at +1, which saved the likes of Ji-Yai Shin, Azahara Munoz, Momoko Ueda, and Jane Park, but left Brittany Lang, Candie Kung, Michelle Wie, Jennifer Song, Sun Young Yoo, Hee-Won Han, Beatriz Recari, and teenage amateur Taylor Coleman out in the cold.  I can't say I'm all that excited about lopping off another 20 or so players from the field.  If you want to have 50 or so golfers playing on Sunday, I don't see why you wouldn't give more people a chance to get there by letting the top 90 or 100 play on Saturday.  And if you want to preserve the normal LPGA cut of top 70 and ties after the end of Friday's round for consistency, why not make the Saturday cut more meaningful by leaving only 36 golfers for the final round, with a playoff for the last spot?  Frankly, there wasn't a whole lot of drama at the bottom of the leaderboard besides Dewi Claire Schreefel's 7-birdie 65 that brought her to -3 for the week and earned her the low round of the day today (and maybe Eun-Hee Ji's 4-birdie 68 that got her back to E).  Mostly it was people moving in the wrong direction, just less sharply than the unlucky few who got chopped....

But enough about what might improve the tournament for next year.  We've got a Sunday where a pair of Team Euro newbies face off against the top 2 South Korean golfers in the world in the final 2 pairings of the tournament.  In the final group, we have the woman who earned the most Euros on the LET last year vs. the woman who took the fewest strokes on the LPGA.  In the next-to-last, NYC spots a shot to the woman 51 slots behind her on the Rolex Rankings.  And if you keep going backward on the pairing sheet, you'll see a couple more  Euro vs. Korea groups, Karine Icher vs. Jee Young Lee and Suzann Pettersen vs. In-Kyung Kim.

If we do end up with an international player winning tomorrow, I sure hope she'll remember what Mi Hyun Kim did when she got what turned out to be the last LPGA victory of her career not all that far from Dallas and similarly close to a tragic disaster of that time....

[Update (11:54 pm):  Bangkokbobby is back blogging again, so head over to Fairways and Forehands for his usual mix of pithy observation and loads of video and photos!]

Lady Gaga on New Year's Eve Kohaku Uta Gassen

Just like Annika Sorenstam and Paula Creamer before her, Lady Gaga delivered a great performance in a big event in Japan:  the New Year's Eve countdown/musical extravaganza on NHK known as Kohaku Uta Gassen.

Somebody uploaded the closing montage from the 62nd annual show, along with the final judgment of who won the competition between the Red (girls') and White (boys') team.  It gives you some sense of the range and kinds of J-pop, enka, and other forms of music popular in Japan in 2011:




You probably noticed Lady Gaga in the montage, but here's her full performance of "Born This Way":



And "You and I":



I don't know if her performances counted toward the Red team's total, but maybe she helped pushed them over the top for the 1st time since 2004. Somehow I doubt groups like AKB48 needed the help, though:



Heck, I think they outnumbered the guys all by themselves!

Tiger Filling Out His Fall Schedule--in Japan

Thanks to Larry the Looper for a link to the news that Tiger Woods will play a 9-hole exhibition on November 1 against JLPGA stars Miho Koga, Shinobu Moromizato, and Rui Kitada at the site of the Masters GC Ladies in Miki City, Hyogo, Japan.  (Although I shouldn't be thanking Mr. Life on Tour for the link because all I needed to do was visit Tiger's own website!)  The total donation for Japanese tsunami/earthquake relief will be 45 million yen, divided equally among the 3 hardest-hit prefectures. 

Imagine how much more they could have raised if they had landed Japanese women who are actually playing some good golf right now like Sakura Yokomine, Chie Arimura, and Miki Saiki--or even bigger global stars like Ai Miyazato, Mika Miyazato, and Yuri Fudoh.  Sure, Koga won there more recently and more often than Ai Miyazato (2006 and 2007 vs. 2004), but Yokomine is the defending champion (and will have taken her shot at the title defense a couple of weeks before the start of the exhibition) and is currently #2 on the JLPGA money list, while Kitada at #13 is the highest-ranked of those actually playing (Moromizato's at #34 and Koga's at #46). 

Sounds to me like someone's worried about being upstaged at "Challenge!  Tiger Woods"--or maybe it's just that TW's advances were rejected by those who are already bigger stars than he is in Japan!

Major News: Pressel at JLPGA's Salonpas Cup, Thompson at Wegmans LPGA Championship

With the weather remaining so wet and spring taking so long to take hold here in Western NY, it's great to hear some great news about upcoming majors in women's golf. Steve DiMeglio reports that Morgan Pressel has pledged half her winnings at her title defense in the JLPGA's 1st major of 2011, the Salonpas Cup in May, while James Johnson reports that Lexi Thompson has accepted a sponsor invitation into the Wegmans LPGA Championship in June.

Looking at the field list for the JLPGA major, it'll be interesting to see if recent Rolex #1s Ji-Yai Shin and Ai Miyazato can put together 4 good rounds, if Na Yeon Choi and Mika Miyazato can continue their hot play, or if Chie Arimura, Yukari Baba, and Sun-Ju Ahn will lead their fellow JLPGAers to the top of this year's leaderboard. Still waiting on more news on the field in Rochester--will pass it along when I find out!

Mika Miyazato Pledges Winnings in LPGA Majors to the American Red Cross

Mika Miyazato announced yesterday that she'll be donating all her winnings in majors on the LPGA to the American Red Cross in support of reconstruction efforts in Japan. That's over $50.6K after her top 10 at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, which already puts her among the most generous of the many golfers who have made pledges or donations. Here's hoping her KNC donation helps keep attention on the Makeruna Nippon/Never Give Up, Japan fundraising web site that she started with Ai Miyazato and Momoko Ueda, which so far has reached only 1% of their goal in U.S. dollars. Maybe if Ryo Ishikawa gives Mikan a shout-out at the Masters....

Mikan's announcement follows on the heels of the news that 124 JLPGA players and officials raised funds in 5 major Japanese cities (Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka) this past Sunday totalling nearly 3.38M yen (almost $40K). The JLPGA returns to action in Kumamoto on April 15th; the tournament formerly known as the Nishijin Ladies Classic has been renamed the East Earthquake Reconstruction Charity Classic and it will feature such luminaries as Ji-Yai Shin, Momoko Ueda, Shiho Oyama, Hee Young Park, Shanshan Feng, Teresa Lu, Sakura Yokomine, Sun-Ju Ahn, Chie Arimura, Yuri Fudoh, and Miho Koga. My guess is we won't see either Miyazato on the JLPGA until the 1st week of May for the 1st major of the season, the Salonpas Cup, which Morgan Pressel won last year.

Golfers Support Japan Relief Efforts

I've been trying to keep track of the many golfers who have stepped up to support Japan relief efforts. Here's as complete a list as I can come up with:

Makeruna Nippon/Never Give Up, Japan: A fundraising organization created by Ai Miyazato, Mika Miyazato, and Momoko Ueda to support Civic Force, a Japanese emergency response team. They also have a site for giving in Japanese yen and British pounds. See LPGA.com and ProGolfTalk for more.

Fukuoka JLPGA fundraiser: Golf Girl passes along the news that 11 JLPGA golfers collected over 75 million yen (over $925,000) at Hakata Station in the city of Fukuoka on the southwestern island of Kyushu: Yui Kawahara, who organized it, along with Chie Arimura, Shinobu Moromizato, Miho Koga, Yukari Baba, Miki Saiki, Akane Iijima, Rui Kitada, Ritsuko Ryu, Yumiko Baba, and Nozomi Sato. Check out her post for her own overview of relief support efforts by golfers and others in Japan.

Studio Alice Ladies: This 4th JLPGA event to be cancelled has announced that its entire purse, 60 million yen (over $740,000), will be donated to relief efforts.

Mi-Jeong Jeon: The JLPGA star gave nearly $125,000.

RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup: The title sponsor donated over $53,000 from birdies and eagles by players, while Karrie Webb, Paula Creamer, Sun Young Yoo, Sarah Jane Smith, and Sandra Gal donated all (or, in Webb's case, half, or $100,000) of their winnings to Japan relief efforts.

Ya Ni Tseng: $50,000 to UNICEF.

Ryuji Imada: His handwritten note imploring fellow PGA Tour golfers to join him in supporting Japan relief efforts inspired Brandt Snedeker, Bobby Gates, and others to tie their initial donations to birdies they make. See Devil Ball Golf for more.

K.J. Choi: $100,000 to the American Red Cross.

Bubba Watson: $50,000.

[Update 1 (11:39 am): At the end of a very funny rookie blog post on getting lost in Christchurch, which she wrote before she knew about the terrible earthquake that hit that exact part of New Zealand, Tiffany Joh points to ways to support relief efforts there and in Japan.]

[Update 2 (3/31/11, 10:59 am): Whoa, check out how much Ryo Ishikawa could conceivably be contributing this year! All his 2011 earnings plus 100,000 yen per birdie!]