HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup Preview/Pairings/Predictions

What better place for an LPGA exhibition than Rio? The 36-hole HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup kicks off the 2009 LPGA preseason tomorrow. I'd love to see a showdown between Angela Park and Eun-Hee Ji, the top 2 players in the Class of 2007, in their 1st appearance as Junior Mints.

But each threesome is interesting. Veterans Jill McGill, Leta Lindley, and Catriona Matthew start things off, followed by Young Guns Allison Fouch, Kristy McPherson, and Louise Friberg. Brazilian amateur Patricia Carvalho gets to measure her game against the likes of Ji and Karen Stupples, while struggling Brazilian professional Candy Hannemann gets to measure hers against Jimin Kang and Christina Kim. The final trio consists of Angela Park, Laura Diaz, and Carin Koch. I'm curious to see if Matthew and Kang can get '09 started right after a disappointing '08s, if Koch can get a career jumpstart a la Lindley in '08, how prepared Kim and Diaz are for their Solheim Cup runs the 1st half of this season, and whether Fouch, McPherson, and Friberg are ready to break through after solid campaigns last season.

I wouldn't put too much weight on bad or indifferent starts for anyone, but we'll get a pretty good sense of who's already pretty sharp if we see any really good rounds this weekend. With the LET's ANZ Ladies Masters only a couple of weeks away, it's never too soon to start putting up some low numbers. Here's my sense of who'll be best prepared for this week, taking into account the numbers of moms with families likely tagging along and the pressures on the 3 Brazilians unofficially hosting the unofficial event:

1. Ji
2. Fouch
3. Kim
4. Park
5. Stupples
6. Diaz
7. McPherson
8. Friberg
9. Matthew
10. Koch

I agree with Jason Sobel that it would have been nice if more of the top LPGA stars had chosen to play here, but as long as this event remains an exhibition, it's going to be hard to draw more than a few of them a year. My suggestion would be to get HSBC to make this the new site for their Women's World Match Play Championship (on hiatus since 2007). What better place to enjoy yourself if you get bounced in the 1st round than Rio? And what better way to kick off the LPGA season than with a showdown between the previous year's top-ranked players?

Whatever the future holds for this event, be sure to follow the LPGA Insider's on-site reports this weekend!

Who Has More Upside, Fujikawa or Ishikawa?

Yes, this is going to be a post on men's golf.

I couldn't help but notice the American golfy media going nuts over Tadd Fujikawa's performance in the Sony Open last week. Monday qualifying with a 67 and shooting the best round of the tournament on Saturday, a 62, will do that to anyone. It kind of reminded me of the Japanese media's treatment of Ryo Ishikawa, except that Ishikawa's already won twice on the Japan Tour and made over 100 million yen in his rookie season last year.

As Dave Seanor recently pointed out, Fujikawa more than doubled his career earnings last week, despite his disappointing final round, but still has made less than $50K. Last May, Ann Miller noted how much more backing Ishikawa is getting. So it's clear that Ishikawa is well ahead of Fujikawa at this very early point in their careers. But where will they end up? Here are two yutube clips to help you decide!

Tadd:



Ryo:



[Update 1 (1:18 pm): Hmm, maybe Arnold Palmer agrees with me!]

[Update 2 (10:16 pm): Mostly Harmless talks, Augusta listens? Or coincidence?]

[Update 3 (1/24/09, 11:39 pm): Brent Kelley totals up the PGA events Ryo will be playing in the coming months over at About.com's golf blog.]

[Update 4 (1/29/09, 4:55 am): Ron Sirak weighs in with some cautionary tales for Ryo.]

LPGA Prognostication Derby Blues

So I've been thinking off and on lately about how to improve on my 3rd-place finish in the competition to identify 2008's best 30 golfers on the LPGA. For 2009, it seems to me I'm doing all right if I get 10 picks about right, 10 a bit off, and 10 wildly off. It's pretty rare for an acknowledged top 10 player to fall all the way out of the top 30, so I'm not too worried about the 1st two of those challenges. But how to minimize that last number? Well, I have to figure out how to approach the following problems:

• Schedule Speculation. Not that many golfers are as decisive--or transparent--about their 2009 schedules as Lorena Ochoa. It's an open question, for instance, how many JLPGA starts Ji-Yai Shin, Momoko Ueda, Ai Miyazato, and Shiho Oyama will make this coming season. Team Wie is spreading the word not to expect her to make more than 14 LPGA starts in her rookie season on the LPGA. How to factor in known or suspected limited schedules among the top/up-and-coming players on tour?
  
• Hot Streak or Quantum Leap? When you look at the LPGA's 2008 Performance Chart, it's clear that Shanshan Feng, Sun Young Yoo, Laura Diaz, Ji Young Oh, Karen Stupples, Brittany Lang, Katherine Hull, and Angela Stanford joined Lorena Ochoa, Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer, Cristie Kerr, Suzann Pettersen, Jeong Jang, Seon Hwa Lee, Na Yeon Choi, In-Kyung Kim, Hee-Won Han, Jee Young Lee, and Meena Lee in finishing last season off in style. The 1st group of names are those who surprised me by doing this, while the 2nd group either stayed at or played up to my preseason expectations. That's 19 players right there (minus Sorenstam) who are fantastic top 30 candidates for 2009. But who among them (aside from the usual suspects) have really made a quantum leap? And how many are due to cool off or go cold?
  
• Bounceback Time: Whether it's from injury, swing changes, or life-changing events (like death in the family, getting engaged or married, or having a baby), a significant portion of the candidates for the top 30 will have some serious bouncing back to do in 2009. Who will be as successful at coming back from an injury as Helen Alfredsson or Candie Kung were last season? I expect a youngster like Ya Ni Tseng to come back fully healed from her triceps injury, but are Natalie Gulbis's back problems and Jeong Jang's wrist problems as chronic and serious as, say, Grace Park's have been? Will Han, Stupples, and Catriona Matthew prove as adept at infant/toddler wrangling and elite golfing as Juli Inkster and Pat Hurst? How will engagement affect Ochoa's game and marriage Mi Hyun Kim's? Will Morgan Pressel finally groove her new swing?
  
• Blip or Trend? Will a healthy Alfredsson remain among the game's elite for the next few years, or was 2008 her swan song? Has Se Ri Pak put her worst season since 2005 behind her? Have we seen the last of Inkster, Laura Davies, Sherri Steinhauer, Hurst, Carin Koch, and Rachel Hetherington in the top 30? And what about other players who have fallen on hard times lately like Grace Park, Gloria Park, Jennifer Rosales, and Dorothy Delasin? And how about players in their prime like Young Kim, Shi Hyun Ahn, Sarah Lee, and Brittany Lincicome who are coming off rather (or very) disappointing seasons?
  
• Young Gun/New Blood Mysteries. Sure, the very best in the rookie classes of 2006 through 2009 are pretty well known, but how will former rookies playing their 1st full season like Amy Yang, Anja Monke, Anna Rawson, and Ashleigh Simon do in '09? Will Ai Miyazato and Brittany Lang be better than ever in 2009? Should we write off Julieta Granada and Meaghan Francella? Should we trust that the improved 2008 stats of players like Song-Hee Kim, Sun Young Yoo, Ji Young Oh, and Teresa Lu will result in even better results in 2009? And who among this year's rookies will step up and surprise?
  

And that's just the known unknowns. What about the unknown unknowns? I'm not looking for your best What Would Don Rumsfeld Do lines (although they would be much appreciated), but if you have other things I should be plugging into that 100-yen Nishijin crystal ball I'm using next week, let me know in comments!

オバマmania II

A little tribute to today's historic inauguration for MH fans: American Jedi painter Chaz Guest visited Obama City, Japan, recently. James at Japan Probe has the details, as usual. Here's the background in English:



And the Japanese TV report (which is where his Jedi roots become apparent):

Make It Hikaru Utada in 2009!

Hat tip to Bill Benzon for sending me to the Japan Times for this piece by Daniel Robson on the coming J-pop assault on America's top 40 charts. Here's hoping the 1st artist he features, Hikaru Utada, does as well in the English-speaking world in 2009 as Jero did in the Japanese-speaking world in 2008.

Here's the video for one of her older songs, "Travelling," which gets a lot of play on our Saturday rides to onechan's yochien:



Here's "Can U Keep a Secret," which stars not one but two robots:



Here's her debut single, "Automatic," which was released in late 1998, just before she turned 16:



By that point, she had been performing for 5 years already, mostly with her mom, Keiko Fuji, an enka singer in the '70s. Here's Utada covering the Carpenters, back when she started her solo career in Cubic U (a reference to her being a 3rd-generation female performer--her grandmother was a blind shamisen player):



Happy birthday, Hikki, and good luck! (Going by her first single, she won't need it....)