Ginn Open Saturday: Moving Day Pairings Galore!

Wow, there are some amazing pairings later today in Orlando--and not just among the leaders. Perhaps the most exciting Seoul Sisters one comes early on the front:

Start Time: 7:35 AM
Seon Hwa Lee
Christina Kim
Jeong Jang

It just squeaks out Grace Park and Hee-Won Han going off the back together at 7:25 am, along with front-siders

Start Time: 8:05 AM
Song-Hee Kim
Jimin Kang
Momoko Ueda

Start Time: 8:15 AM
Candie Kung
Inbee Park
Na Yeon Choi

Start Time: 8:45 AM
Jee Young Lee
Eun-Hee Ji
Stacy Prammanasudh

and back-siders

Start Time: 8:45 AM
Ji Young Oh
Birdie Kim
Angela Park

. But unless someone throws down another course record, everyone in these and the other pairings will be playing for position. The real contenders are in the final two groups:

Start Time: 9:15 AM
Lorena Ochoa
Carin Koch
Teresa Lu

Start Time: 9:25 AM
Yani Tseng
Suzann Pettersen
Minea Blomqvist

It's rare to see Ochoa not in the final group on the weekend, isn't it? What are the odds she'll be in it after today's round is history?

Ginn Open Friday: Ya Ni Tseng Shoots Course Record, Leads Ochoa by 3

With 12 birdies and an eagle sandwiched between a bogey on her first hole of the Ginn Open and her closing one today, Ya Ni Tseng fired a course-record 64 to get to -12, good enough for a 3-shot lead over Lorena Ochoa (67) and Minea Blomqvist (66). With the afternoon groups still on the course, Suzann Pettersen (-8 on the tournament with 8 holes left to play) and Carin Koch (-7 with 5 to play) stand the best chance of chasing down the Taiwanese rookie. Stay tuned!

[Update 1 (3:48 pm): Other low rounds today include a 67 from Candie Kung (-3, T16 thus far) and 68s by Angela Stanford (-6, T7) and Eun-Hee Ji (-4, T12). Other low rounds in process include Jee Young Lee's, Morgan Pressel's, and Michele Redman's -4 performances with a handful of holes remaining.]

[Update 2 (4/19/08, 12:32 am): As Hound Dog reports, Suzann Pettersen matched Blomqvist's 66 to pull within 2 shots of Tseng, and Koch matched Teresa Lu's 69 to put the two first-round leaders 4 shots back, T5. So there are 6 in the lead pack--and there could have been fewer if Tseng hadn't missed an easy birdie on 16 and bogeyed 18! People out of the pack will need to improve on Jee Young Lee's 66 and not fall back to earth like Morgan Pressel did (she ended with a 70) if they want to have a chance to be in contention Sunday. I can see Tseng, Blomqvist, Lu, and Koch failing to keep up the sub-70 pace on moving day, but not Ochoa and Pettersen. If that happens, anyone among the top 21 golfers within 5 shots of Ochoa still has a chance to contend--a slim one, but still a chance. Sure, someone who made the cut on the dot (+1) can pull a Pettersen and go double digits under par on the weekend, but the winning score is looking to be in the -14 to -18 range, if not lower, so we're talking back-to-back course records here. Not just more 68s like Becky Lucidi (E, T57), Mikaela Parmlid (-2, T30), and Inbee Park (-3, T22) made.]

[Update 3 (12:37 am): And here's some must-see tv courtesy of HD. If Tseng, Lu, and Tseng continue to impress, by the way, the Seoul Sister community may need to come up with a variation on Eric's "teen Taiwanese terror" sobriquet for the Taiwanese trio.]

[Update 4 (12:57 am): I like Hound Dog's "Junior Mints" suggestion for the Former Super Sophs that I think I'll start using it. Not least because they need a fresh start after Friday's round--besides Blomqvist's, JY Lee's, and Lu's fine rounds, the rest of the class lost ground on the lead pack: Brittany Lang and Allison Fouch got caught by Lee (-4, T13), tied with Eun-Hee Ji and 1 shot back of Super Soph Charlotte Mayorkas (-5, T10); Kyeong Bae got caught by Super Sophs Inbee Park and Song-Hee Kim and rookie Na Yeon Choi (-3, T22); Kristy McPherson got caught by Seon Hwa Lee and Pressel (-2, T30); Ai Miyazato got caught by Karin Sjodin (-1, T41); Julieta Granada kept pace with Super Soph Na On Min (E, T57); and H.J. Choi chased down Super Sophs Angela Park and Ji Young Oh to get to the right side of the cut line (+1, T68). That's 22 Young Guns still playing on the weekend, for those who weren't counting. Meaghan Francella, Kim Hall, and Linda Wessberg were the only ones you'd have expected to join Nina Reis in Cutsville. Unfortunately, NYer Danielle Downey's 69-82 start bought her some beach-side property there. But that's why God made exempt status--Francella, Wessberg, Hall, and Downey will be back. And only 5 of Junior Minds joined the 14-strong contingent on Young Gun Street.]

[Update 5 (1:03 am): Checking the Power Meter, Koch is the only precision player among those in the lead pack, although it should be noted that Pettersen and Ochoa dialed down the driving distance today and posted better numbers. For the record, Jeong Jang did the same but posted the exact same number as when she was bombing it Thursday, 71. If you're hitting a lot of short irons and wedges from the short grass, sure, power matters! But that's a big "if"!]

[Update 6 (1:20 am): Some nice tidbits in the interviews: Blomqvist and Pettersen are good on strategy, Tseng and Ochoa on the mental side, plus Blomqvist is assembling IKEA furniture in her new home just 5 minutes from the course (hey, there's a sponsorship opportunity--I can see the commercial: "Minea Blomqvist, you just faced down the world #1 to win your first tournament. What are you going to be doing tonight?" "Assembling my IKEA furniture, Verne!")

Life Card Ladies Golf Tournament Friday: Struggles at the Top

#8-ranked Shinobu Moromizato's 68 set the pace at the Life Card Ladies JLPGA event today, but just as big a story are the big-time struggles of the other top-ranked players on tour. Shiho Ohyama (78, T74), Hiroko Yamaguchi and Na Zhang (77, T52), Akiko Fukushima and Bo-Bae Song (76, T42), Sakura Yokomine (75, T36), and Yuri Fudoh, Mi-Jeong Jeon, and Miho Koga (74, T23) will have one eye on the cut line rather than the top of the leaderboard. Even Miki Saiki, Hyun-Ju Shin, and Akane Iijima are stranded 4 shots back of Moromizato, although there are only 4 players between them and the first-round leader, including #19 Yuko Mitsuka and #23 Midori Yoneyama at -3 and #22 Yukari Baba at -2.

Ginn Open Thursday: When Former Super Sophs Attack

Hound Dog already has the first-round recap for the Ginn Open covered with his usual aplomb [Update: and Say You SeRi is live-blogging Se Ri Pak's play over at Seoul Sisters], so I'm going to focus on a few stories that are likely to be under the media's radar coming out of Orlando Thursday.

Are the Former Super Sophs Back? I started getting serious about this LPGA blogging gig while focusing on Ai Miyazato and her cohorts in the rookie class of 2006. As I tracked their performance last year and over their brief careers--we're approaching the anniversary of my rudimentary first attempt--I became convinced that they were one of the deepest and most talented classes in LPGA history and would set the tone for their generation. So you can imagine my surprise at how slowly the cream of their class have started this season and how much they have been eclipsed out of the gates by resurgent New Super Soph and competitive rookie classes. Sure, Brittany Lang seemed to have gotten her game back after a horrible slump over the first two-thirds of her sophomore-jinxed 2007, Teresa Lu was playing surprisingly solid and sometimes spectacular golf, and Minea Blomqvist had a couple of great finishes, but where were the rest of them?

Waiting for the Ginn Open, apparently. Lu birdied 3 of her last 7 holes (on the front) to post a 67 and tie Carin Koch for the first-round lead. Futures Tour graduate Allison Fouch did the same on the back to join the big group T3 at 68. Kyeong Bae finally returned to her birdie machine ways, making 7 of them on her way to a 69, good enough for T10 with classmates Lang, Blomqvist, Sun Young Yoo (who dropped more birdie putts than fairways she hit off the tee), Danielle Downey (who also made 7 birdies and got 3 of them in her last 7 holes on the front), and Katie Futcher (who like Downey offset a double bogey with 7 birdies).

True, the big names couldn't quite get it in gear--Ai-chan (T22) was the best of the bunch with a 70 (despite 3 bogeys on the back to cancel out that side's birdies), while Karin Sjodin could only manage a 72 while Seon Hwa Lee did the same playing with Se Ri Pak (76), Morgan Pressel did the same playing with Annika Sorenstam (70), and Jee Young Lee ballooned to a 74 playing with Juli Inkster (69). And the agonies of Meaghan Francella (75, T111) and H.J. Choi (76, T122) continued, the fortunes of Kim Hall (76) fell, the shaky play of Linda Wessberg (78, T136) collapsed, and the good run of Nina Reis (80, T143), who got into the field thanks to a top 10 the week before in Mexico, came to an end.

But the 5 struggling to make the cut and 5 to get it in gear are overshadowed by the 8 juniors among the 21 players who shot sub-70 rounds yesterday. That's compared to 2 sophs (Charlotte Mayorkas, Kristy McPherson) and 1 frosh (Ya Ni Tseng) in the hunt. And Ai-chan is 1 shot ahead of soph Song-Hee Kim and frosh Momoko Ueda to round out the group of 14 Young Guns among the 45 players under par thus far.

How Much Does Power Matter? Picking up on a discussion from yesterday's post, consider that the leaderboard is a mix of power and precision players. Lu was blasting the ball 280 yards off the tee, outdriving co-leader Koch on average by almost 40 yards, but it was Koch who lead in greens in regulation, 15-14. Lorena Ochoa lead the bombers at T3 with a 283.5-yard driving average, followed by Tseng (283), Karrie Webb (274), Fouch (273.5), Suzann Pettersen (273), and Charlotte Mayorkas (267.5), but 230-yard pea shooter Mhairi McKay managed to keep pace with them somehow. The big group at T10 and T22 was almost split between bombers (6) and pea shooters (7), but 9 of them were actually in the mid-250-to-mid-260-yard middle range. At the bottom of the pack, among those who failed to break 75, there were certainly more precision players struggling (13) than mid-length players (10) and bombers (9), but someone like Birdie Kim, who drove the ball an astounding 285.5 yards and hit 13 greens Thursday, is a great example of how much accuracy with the irons and touch around and on the greens matters--she'll be fighting to pass as many of the 110 players ahead of her as she can and maybe make the cut.

To be sure, having more power helps you deal with the gusting winds and hard, fast, and undulating greens that characterize this tournament, but what a set-up like this really puts a premium on is judgment in the choice of club, kind of shot, and target, patience with bad bounces and missed putts due to less-than-smooth afternoon greens, solid ball-striking on approach shots in particular, and excellent scrambling and putting. If you don't believe me, read Suzann Pettersen's interview.

While it's striking that top-notch precision players like Pressel and Lee (E), Natalie Gulbis and Jane Park (+1), and Mi Hyun Kim and Angela Park (+2) had trouble scoring Thursday, even normally precise players with new-found distance like Jeong Jang (280 yards off the tee, but only -1) and Paula Creamer (263, but only E) didn't seem to benefit all that much from it. The bottom line is, it doesn't matter whether you birdie the 303-yard 7th hole with a sandie, as Ochoa did, or a sand wedge to 15 feet, as Koch did, so long as you get the ball in the hole quickly enough not to lose a shot to the rest of the field there.

The Big Mo. Looks like Lindsey Wright (69), Angela Stanford (70), and Karen Stupples (70) are continuing their fine play so far this season and that Koch, McPherson, and Lang are picking up where they left off last week. Laura Diaz (74), however, has some work to do today if she wants to avoid missing her second straight cut, Louise Friberg (77) is seriously struggling, and Maria Hjorth (77) probably should have gone for her third straight top 10 in Mexico--although Inbee Park (73) might disagree. Rookies Tseng and Choi are threatening to turn a formerly tight Rookie of the Year race into a face-off, although Momoko Ueda is lurking at -1 and Hee Young Park isn't out of the tournament at +1. And of course Ochoa (T3) and Sorenstam (T22) are, as always, in contention. Still, as everyone can point to shots they left out on the course, and as everyone is going to have to deal with very conditions tomorrow, it's too soon to tell who really has The Big Mo. It'll be interesting to see if a lead pack forms or if the field will remain bunched heading into the weekend.

Paging Steve Elling

Thanks for the speculations on an Ochoa Slam--or even a Grand Slam for her--in 2008. I appreciated the little gems you sprinkled through the piece, such as

True, the absurdity of again crawling this far out on a limb precisely three days after eating crow with regard to Woods' four-runner hopes is self-evident. But at the moment, as transcendent as Woods has been on the men's tour, Ochoa's play has been positively meteoric. The comparisons have been far more frequent as a result.

Frequent? Yes. Quite. Indubitably. To be sure. Although he's expressed doubt that it can be done, even Hound Dog has a poll looking for alternatives to the phrase "Ochoa Slam." So, yeah, join the club.

Membership has its privileges and all, but it also has its responsibilities. Like getting the depth question right:

Whereas Woods' major-championship objective was made more difficult because of the comparatively superior depth in men's golf, Ochoa has likewise ascended to the top so quickly, there's seemingly nothing in her way. She moved into the No. 1 position in the women's world rankings one year ago and last week qualified for induction for the World Golf Hall of Fame, at 26 the second-youngest player ever to do so on career points.

Ochoa's speed of qualification for the Hall evidence of the "comparatively superior depth in men's golf"? Watch it--you're entering Doug Ferguson territory here. And I don't mean that in a good way. In case you weren't paying attention back in January, let's take a look at some of the numbers you ignored. They clearly show that Ochoa's competition is closer to her than Tiger's.

The World Golf Rankings for the men and the Rolex Rankings for the women are quite similar ranking systems. Tiger (22.36) is lapping #2 Phil Mickelson (9.75) and #3 Ernie Els (6.36) is even further behind. Contrast that with the smaller lead Ochoa (18.53) has on #2 Annika Sorenstam (9.47), the only player on the LPGA to have as many top 10s as her this season. It's not just that there are 3 women with higher ratings than Els (Suzann Pettersen at 8.08, Paula Creamer at 7.08, and Karrie Webb at 6.64); it's that you have to go down to the 39th position on the Rolex Rankings to find someone further behind Ochoa than that 16-point lead Tiger has on Els. While a good number of these players compete almost completely on the KLPGA and JLPGA, the fact remains that Ochoa faces more competition on the LPGA than Tiger does on the PGA.

The Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index also supports my claim, although not as starkly. In the men's rankings, Tiger (66.44) has a huge lead on #2 Steve Stricker (68.70), and there are 17 guys within 3 points of him (several of whom split their time between the PGA and European Tour). In the women's rankings, Ochoa (67.87) has a large lead on #2 Creamer (69.29), and there are 16 gals within 3 points of her (2 of whom don't play regularly on the LPGA Tour). So the depth of competition is relatively similar, but Tiger's lead on his nearest competitors is much bigger. (Plus, if the GSPI included KLPGA events in its database, Ji-Yai Shin would most likely be the #2 golfer in their system, much closer to Ochoa than Creamer, and Sun Ju Ahn would likely be within 3 points of Ochoa.)

So, yes, Ochoa's margins of victory have been impressive, but some of her top competitors are rehabbing injuries (Annika Sorenstam, Mi Hyun Kim, Se Ri Pak), coming back from giving birth (Hee-Won Han, Karen Stupples, Catriona Matthew), just beginning to find their games again (Suzann Pettersen, Karrie Webb, Jee Young Lee, Seon Hwa Lee, Maria Hjorth, Inbee Park), slowing down after fast starts (Paula Creamer, Jeong Jang, Momoko Ueda, Angela Stanford, Laura Diaz, Jane Park, Christina Kim), or just plain struggling (Cristie Kerr, Angela Park, Morgan Pressel, Stacy Prammanasudh) while Ochoa has been in the zone. So please do your readers a favor and stop pretending it's going to be any easier for Ochoa to keep winning majors than for Tiger to start winning them again.

Finally, I think you both overestimate Ochoa's power advantage and misunderstand where her game has improved the most:

Ochoa is piling up wins and making jaws drop at a clip Sorenstam can appreciate. Ochoa tweaked her backswing in the offseason and changed to a different ball, picking up 5-7 more yards off the tee. She's No. 1 in driving distance at a hair under 280 yards, which means she can overwhelm courses like no other LPGA player. For perspective, that figure would rank around No. 100 on the PGA Tour in power.

There are 11 other players averaging over 270 yards off the tee on the LPGA including some of Ochoa's closest competitors: Pettersen (270.6), Jee Young Lee (272.8), Stupples (271.5), Hjorth (275.0), and Gustafson (277.4). Moreover, there are a lot of big hitters among the young guns who will provide her toughest competition over the next 4 seasons: in addition to Lee, rookies #10 Hee Young Park (271.2), #13 Ya Ni Tseng (268.2), #15 Na Yeon Choi (266.2), #18 Shanshan Feng (264.8), and #25 Momoko Ueda (262.9) stand out. But length off the tee is not destiny on the LPGA: the last three rookies of the year, Angela Park, Seon Hwa Lee, and Paula Creamer, can not be found in the top 80 in driving distance thus far this season. And Sorenstam's average driving distance is still far behind what it was before her neck and back injuries, but she's managed 5 consecutive top 10s. In fact, where Ochoa has been focusing the most in the early season is on her wedge game; she has made the most improvement from 100 yards and in. We'll just have to see how 2006 champion Mi Hyun Kim, who still holds the 72-hole tournament record at -12, does this week at the Ginn Open, along with all the other precision players in the field....

More in this vein at the end of the month, when I update my Best of the LPGA rankings and rank the Young Gun classes of 2006 and 2007 together for the first time. Until then, I appreciate the spotlight you're putting on the LPGA, but could do without your recycling of myths about Ochoa's competition and women's golf.

[Update 4/18/08: Beth Ann Baldry jumps on the Elling bandwagon in Golfweek, less annoyingly. But I'd love to see the golf writers focusing on the question of who has the best chance to end Ochoa's major winning streak. It's a great opportunity to educate the general public that knows little of women's golf beyond Ochoa, Sorenstam, and Wie.]

[Update 4/19/08: Jeff Rude proves he doesn't read this blog. Way to boil Elling's mistake down to its essence, Jeff. Keep up the good work! Seriously, when are golf writers going to realize that the rest of the LPGA doesn't have to be cast as chopped liver to build up Ochoa? Forget what I said yesterday about golf writers educating the golfing public--they need to start paying attention first.]