Paula Creamer should be dominating the SemGroup Championship. With only three holes left to play yesterday, she was playing great and sitting pretty at -5, but for the third day in a row she made a pair of bogeys down the stretch to keep the hopes of the rest of the field alive. Two shots back, thanks to a fantastic 67, is Hall of Famer Juli Inkster, who lost in a playoff last year to Mi Hyun Kim and who is hoping to replicate Annika Sorenstam's playoff win over Creamer from last week. Lurking 8 shots back is world #1 Lorena Ochoa, who's keeping hope alive for her fifth straight win in as many starts. She shot her first sub-par 9 on the front yesterday but promptly gave both strokes back on the back to remain at +5 for the tournament. The only other players between Ochoa and Creamer are Brittany Lang (+1), Angela Stanford (+2), and Leta Lindley (+2). So it will be Ochoa and Lindley, Lang and Stanford, and Creamer and Inkster in the final 3 pairings today. Jeong Jang and Jamie Hullett and Jee Young Lee and Ji Young Oh round out the top 10 (as well as the short list of players in the field at +5 or better through the first 3 rounds).
More on those outsde the top 10 after I make pancakes for the girls!
[Update (1:44 pm): Hound Dog covers how the top 6 got there in more detail than I ever can (still no cable here!), and more broadly than Doug Ferguson did. But as neither of them paid respects to those who shot themselves out of the tournament on moving day--or gave credit to Dorothy Delasin and Jimin Kang for their fine 69s--I may as well. Hee Young Park continued her pattern this year of self-destructing in one of her rounds--this time it was an 80 that dropped her out of the top 40 yesterday. Meena Lee's 81 put her first top 10 in forever out of reach today. Na On Min's 78 and Candie Kung's 77 ended their comebacks after bad 1st rounds. Ji Young Oh's collapse on the 17th, which Hound Dog documents, made her odds of contending today very slim. And Ai Miyazato's 75, Jee Young Lee's 74, and Carin Koch's 74 didn't help their causes, either.]
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Crystal Geyser Ladies Golf Tournament Saturday: The March of the No-Names?
After a weather delay, play has resumed at the Crystal Geyser Ladies Golf Tournament, but nothing seems to be stopping the unheralded JLPGA players at the top of the leaderboard. Ritsuko Ryu and Maiko Wakabayashi have reached -8 only 6 holes into the second round and have opened up a 3-shot gap on fellow no-names Mayumi Nakajima (-3 through 8), Mihoko Iseri (+1 through 8), and Ji-Woo Lee (-1 through 8). Namika Omata (-1 through 7) is the only ranked player within 3 shots of the lead. 4 back are Miho Koga (-3 through 12) and Shinobu Moromizato (E through 7); 5 back are Ayako Uehara (-2 through 12), Sakura Yokomine (-1 through 9), Mie Nakata (-1 through 8), and Hiroko Yamaguchi (E through 8). Yuko Mitsuka has already posted a 69 to become the co-leader in the clubhouse at -2, tied with Akane Azuma, who shot a 68. It'll be interesting to see who among the no-names can stay at the top of the leaderboard and who among the big names can chase down the lead pack. There seem to be a lot of birdie opportunities in the last 4 holes, so anything can happen.
[Update 1 (10:16 am): Play was suspended due to darkness with the leaders having completed 11 holes. Wakabayashi at -7 had fallen behind Ryu by 1 shot, but Lee at -6 had pulled within 2 shots of her. Koga's 68 got her even with Omata at -5, while Nakajima and Iseri had fallen back to -4 with Yokomine and Moromizato and Ji-Hee Lee had joined Yamaguchi and Nakata at -3. Players will restart the second round at 6:30 am and the third round will begin at 9:30 am.]
[Update 2 (5/5/08, 1:55 am): Here's how the leaderboard stood after two rounds. Ryu and Wakabayashi at -9 opened up a 4-shot lead on Koga, Yokomine, and Iseri, and a 5-shot lead on Moromizato. Saiki (74), Yamaguchi (73), and Uehara (72) surprisingly shot themselves out of the possibility of contention, all thanks to weak back 9s. Less surprisingly, Omata and Nakajima did the same.]
[Update 1 (10:16 am): Play was suspended due to darkness with the leaders having completed 11 holes. Wakabayashi at -7 had fallen behind Ryu by 1 shot, but Lee at -6 had pulled within 2 shots of her. Koga's 68 got her even with Omata at -5, while Nakajima and Iseri had fallen back to -4 with Yokomine and Moromizato and Ji-Hee Lee had joined Yamaguchi and Nakata at -3. Players will restart the second round at 6:30 am and the third round will begin at 9:30 am.]
[Update 2 (5/5/08, 1:55 am): Here's how the leaderboard stood after two rounds. Ryu and Wakabayashi at -9 opened up a 4-shot lead on Koga, Yokomine, and Iseri, and a 5-shot lead on Moromizato. Saiki (74), Yamaguchi (73), and Uehara (72) surprisingly shot themselves out of the possibility of contention, all thanks to weak back 9s. Less surprisingly, Omata and Nakajima did the same.]
Friday, May 2, 2008
SemGroup Championship Friday: The Brutality Continues
Somehow I don't think the winds are down in Tulsa for the second round of the SemGroup Championship. Lorena Ochoa followed up yesterday's 73 with a birdie-free 74, but at +5 she is nowhere close to being out of the tournament--she's T26 as of this writing but almost certainly will be in the top 20 by the time the afternoon groups have completed their rounds. Other first-round leaders tumbled as well: Mi Hyun Kim followed up her 70 with a 77 to match Ochoa's 2-round total, Cristie Kerr followed up her 72 with a 78 (+7, T49 thus far), and Nancy Scranton followed up her 72 with an 84 to miss the cut. By the same token, even a decent round any other week moved you way up this leaderboard: despite failing to break 80 on Thursday, Jimin Kang's 70 on Friday has her at +10, 1 shot on the wrong side of the cut line right now, with a better than 75% chance of playing on the weekend; Na On Min's bogey-free 68 and Na Yeon Choi's 70 got them to +3 and T13 for now, with a 50-50 chance of being in the top 10 heading into moving day; and Jee Young Lee's 69 pulled her even with Hee Young Park at +2 and T7 for now, with an excellent chance of being in the top 5 at the end of the day. But the best indicator of how tough Cedar Ridge is playing is Paula Creamer's twin-bogey finish that dropped her from -3 on the tournament to -1 in her final 3 holes for the second consecutive day. The way this thing is looking, if you can make sure you break 75 each day and break 70 twice along the way, you, too, could be a SemGroup Champion!
[Update 1 (7:48 pm): Ji Young Oh was -2 with holes to play but bogeyed the 12th and 15th to fall 1 stroke behind Creamer. Despite their late-round troubles, Creamer and Oh are the only two golfers in the field to finish their first two rounds at par or better for the tournament. Brittany Lang had a chance to join them, but a bogey on her penultimate hole, the 8th, dropped her to +1, T4 with Leta Lindley. Ai Miyazato, by contrast, birdied the 8th and 9th to limit the damage on her day to a 73, good enough for +2 and T5 with Lee, Park, Angela Stanford, and Meena Lee. Just as I predicted, +3 was good enough for T10 and +5 for T20, while there's still a chance for the cut line to go as high as +11. Angela Park just needed a par on her final hole, the 9th, to be there and a birdie to assure that she'd be playing on the weekend, but a bogey assured instead that she'd miss the cut, along with Natalie Gulbis, Morgan Pressel, Momoko Ueda, Sun Young Yoo, and Sherri Steinhauer. That's only the 2nd missed cut of Park's career.]
[Update 2 (9:14 pm): My bad--Vicky Hurst tied Pat Hurst at +4, knocking Ochoa, Kim, and the rest at +5 to T21. Kerr and the rest at +8, by the way, ended up in the top 40. But the cut stayed at +10.]
[Update 3 (5/3/08, 4:15 am): Doug Ferguson's AP story tries to shoehorn the tournament into a Creamer-Ochoa showdown and while he includes some good details he misses stories the LPGA.com notes and interviews page picked up on. As usual, Hound Dog's recap and highlights give you a better sense of how the field played.]
[Update 1 (7:48 pm): Ji Young Oh was -2 with holes to play but bogeyed the 12th and 15th to fall 1 stroke behind Creamer. Despite their late-round troubles, Creamer and Oh are the only two golfers in the field to finish their first two rounds at par or better for the tournament. Brittany Lang had a chance to join them, but a bogey on her penultimate hole, the 8th, dropped her to +1, T4 with Leta Lindley. Ai Miyazato, by contrast, birdied the 8th and 9th to limit the damage on her day to a 73, good enough for +2 and T5 with Lee, Park, Angela Stanford, and Meena Lee. Just as I predicted, +3 was good enough for T10 and +5 for T20, while there's still a chance for the cut line to go as high as +11. Angela Park just needed a par on her final hole, the 9th, to be there and a birdie to assure that she'd be playing on the weekend, but a bogey assured instead that she'd miss the cut, along with Natalie Gulbis, Morgan Pressel, Momoko Ueda, Sun Young Yoo, and Sherri Steinhauer. That's only the 2nd missed cut of Park's career.]
[Update 2 (9:14 pm): My bad--Vicky Hurst tied Pat Hurst at +4, knocking Ochoa, Kim, and the rest at +5 to T21. Kerr and the rest at +8, by the way, ended up in the top 40. But the cut stayed at +10.]
[Update 3 (5/3/08, 4:15 am): Doug Ferguson's AP story tries to shoehorn the tournament into a Creamer-Ochoa showdown and while he includes some good details he misses stories the LPGA.com notes and interviews page picked up on. As usual, Hound Dog's recap and highlights give you a better sense of how the field played.]
Crystal Geyser Ladies Golf Tournament Friday: Who Shot What?!
The first round of the Crystal Geyser Ladies Golf Tournament is complete and there are a lot of surprises at the top of the leaderboard. Among the 37 players who went under par at the Keiyo Country Club were big names like Miho Koga (-1, T23), Sakura Yokomine (-2, T13), Hiroko Yamaguchi (-3, T8), and Shinobu Moromizato (-4, T4), but Ritsuko Ryu's bogey-free 65 and Mihoko Iseri's and Maiko Wakabayashi's single-bogey 66s came out of left field. The top 10 has more unfamiliar names than usual:
1st/-7 Ryu (65)
T2/-6 Iseri, Wakabayashi (66)
T4/-4 Moromizato, Namika Omata, Ji-Woo Lee, Yasuko Ohtake (68)
T8/-3 Yamaguchi, Midori Yoneyama, Kayo Yamada, Itsumi Okada, Eriko Moriyama (69)
Which means that there are many top 30 JLPGA players who need to make a big move Saturday:
T13/-2 Yokomine, Miki Saiki, Akane Iijima, Ji-Hee Lee, Mie Nakata (70)
T23/-1 Koga, Hiromi Mogi, Pei-Lin Yu, Yui Kawahara, Chie Arimura, Ayako Uehara (71)
T38/E Akiko Fukushima (72)
T50/+1 Yun-Jye Wei, Hyun-Ju Shin, Yuko Mitsuka (73)
T67/+2 Eun-A Lim, Erina Hara, Mayu Hattori (74)
T77/+3 Yukari Baba (75)
Even with Yuri Fudoh, Shiho Ohyama, Mi-Jeong Jeon, Bo-Bae Song, Na Zhang, and Kaori Higo taking the week off, the JLPGA's biggest names in the field have their work cut out for them!
1st/-7 Ryu (65)
T2/-6 Iseri, Wakabayashi (66)
T4/-4 Moromizato, Namika Omata, Ji-Woo Lee, Yasuko Ohtake (68)
T8/-3 Yamaguchi, Midori Yoneyama, Kayo Yamada, Itsumi Okada, Eriko Moriyama (69)
Which means that there are many top 30 JLPGA players who need to make a big move Saturday:
T13/-2 Yokomine, Miki Saiki, Akane Iijima, Ji-Hee Lee, Mie Nakata (70)
T23/-1 Koga, Hiromi Mogi, Pei-Lin Yu, Yui Kawahara, Chie Arimura, Ayako Uehara (71)
T38/E Akiko Fukushima (72)
T50/+1 Yun-Jye Wei, Hyun-Ju Shin, Yuko Mitsuka (73)
T67/+2 Eun-A Lim, Erina Hara, Mayu Hattori (74)
T77/+3 Yukari Baba (75)
Even with Yuri Fudoh, Shiho Ohyama, Mi-Jeong Jeon, Bo-Bae Song, Na Zhang, and Kaori Higo taking the week off, the JLPGA's biggest names in the field have their work cut out for them!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
SemGroup Championship Thursday: The Course Is Winning
With all the morning groups in the clubhouse at the SemGroup Championship, it's safe to conclude that the Cedar Ridge course is winning. Ji Young Oh was the only player to get into red figures in the bunch, and she needed 3 birdies in a row as she made the turn from the back to the front to shoot her 1-under-par 70. Last week's Futures Tour winner Vicky Hurst was -3 at the turn after making 4 birdies and a bogey on the back, but reversed course with 4 bogeys and a birdie on the front to fall back to E, tied with Ai Miyazato and Leta Lindley, who small-balled and scrambled their way around the tough track.
So far, Hee Young Park, at -3 through the 7th hole, is off to the best start of those with afternoon starting times. Defending champion Mi Hyun Kim is +2 through the first eight holes of the back that Oh fired a 32 on, as is Lorena Ochoa, who's seeking her 5th win in as many starts. More later!
[Update (5/2/08, 4:38 am): The Cedar Ridge course continued beating down the top women golfers in the world long into the afternoon in Tulsa. Hee Young Park held on for a 69 and was the only player in the field to break 70. Mi Hyun Kim closed with a 33 on the front to get to -1 and back up her claim that with the tree damage, shorter rough, and her increased distance, the course would be playing much easier than last year. And despite making bogeys on the 8th and 9th, her final holes, Paula Creamer joined Kim and Oh at -1. So 4 players broke 71 while 29 failed to break 80 Thursday. Among those having the most trouble with the course and conditions were Morgan Pressel (80, T114), Grace Park and Sherri Steinhauer (79, Y97), Momoko Ueda and Karen Stupples (78, T81), Angela Park, Inbee Park, and Candie Kung (77, T66), Natalie Gulbis and Laura Diaz (76, T51), and Jee Young Lee, Na Yeon Choi, and Christina Kim (75, T41). In context, then, the following rounds were not all that bad:
Sure, Matthew might feel differently after starting out -2 for her first 7 holes; Ochoa may feel she squandered her eagle on the 1st, her 10th hole, that brought her back to E for a time; Stanford may regret her weak finish after fighting back to -1 at the same point in her round; and Kerr must be frustrated by her 3-over finish over her last 5 holes, also on the front. But they shouldn't feel all that bad, as everyone else had even more lost opportunities on Thursday.
After all, according to the LPGA.com notes and interviews page, wind gusts approached 40 mph and the first-round scoring average was 76.78 (3.5 strokes higher than last year's). Oh emphasized the importance of patience and taking advantage of the wind when it was helping you; Park and Kim talked a lot about playing low-ball golf and punching their way around the course; Creamer talked a lot about mental toughness, working the ball, and being careful on approach shots into the hard, fast, undulating greens. With Ochoa, Kim, and Creamer playing together, it was particularly interesting to hear what they thought of each other's rounds. Kim mentioned that Ochoa hitting the ball so high was a disadvantage in such conditions, but Ochoa felt it was more a problem with her rhythm on approach shots that held her back. Meanwhile, Creamer was surprised that Kim had tied her at the end of the day. Doug Ferguson's AP story helps explain why and is much more detailed than his usual phone-it-in effort for the LPGA. Kudos to Ferguson, as well, for noting that Stacy Prammanasudh withdrew because of the flu.]
So far, Hee Young Park, at -3 through the 7th hole, is off to the best start of those with afternoon starting times. Defending champion Mi Hyun Kim is +2 through the first eight holes of the back that Oh fired a 32 on, as is Lorena Ochoa, who's seeking her 5th win in as many starts. More later!
[Update (5/2/08, 4:38 am): The Cedar Ridge course continued beating down the top women golfers in the world long into the afternoon in Tulsa. Hee Young Park held on for a 69 and was the only player in the field to break 70. Mi Hyun Kim closed with a 33 on the front to get to -1 and back up her claim that with the tree damage, shorter rough, and her increased distance, the course would be playing much easier than last year. And despite making bogeys on the 8th and 9th, her final holes, Paula Creamer joined Kim and Oh at -1. So 4 players broke 71 while 29 failed to break 80 Thursday. Among those having the most trouble with the course and conditions were Morgan Pressel (80, T114), Grace Park and Sherri Steinhauer (79, Y97), Momoko Ueda and Karen Stupples (78, T81), Angela Park, Inbee Park, and Candie Kung (77, T66), Natalie Gulbis and Laura Diaz (76, T51), and Jee Young Lee, Na Yeon Choi, and Christina Kim (75, T41). In context, then, the following rounds were not all that bad:
T8/+1 Juli Inkster, Cristie Kerr, Carin Koch, Brittany Lang
T14/+2 Jeong Jang, Meena Lee, Teresa Lu, Catriona Matthew, Lorena Ochoa, Angela Stanford
T23/+3 Minea Blomqvist, Laura Davies, Maria Hjorth, Pat Hurst, Eun-Hee Ji, Young Kim, Seon Hwa Lee, Jane Park
Sure, Matthew might feel differently after starting out -2 for her first 7 holes; Ochoa may feel she squandered her eagle on the 1st, her 10th hole, that brought her back to E for a time; Stanford may regret her weak finish after fighting back to -1 at the same point in her round; and Kerr must be frustrated by her 3-over finish over her last 5 holes, also on the front. But they shouldn't feel all that bad, as everyone else had even more lost opportunities on Thursday.
After all, according to the LPGA.com notes and interviews page, wind gusts approached 40 mph and the first-round scoring average was 76.78 (3.5 strokes higher than last year's). Oh emphasized the importance of patience and taking advantage of the wind when it was helping you; Park and Kim talked a lot about playing low-ball golf and punching their way around the course; Creamer talked a lot about mental toughness, working the ball, and being careful on approach shots into the hard, fast, undulating greens. With Ochoa, Kim, and Creamer playing together, it was particularly interesting to hear what they thought of each other's rounds. Kim mentioned that Ochoa hitting the ball so high was a disadvantage in such conditions, but Ochoa felt it was more a problem with her rhythm on approach shots that held her back. Meanwhile, Creamer was surprised that Kim had tied her at the end of the day. Doug Ferguson's AP story helps explain why and is much more detailed than his usual phone-it-in effort for the LPGA. Kudos to Ferguson, as well, for noting that Stacy Prammanasudh withdrew because of the flu.]
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