When earlier this week I noted that Brittany Lincicome was on a 3-round par-or-better run and wondered whether this could mark "the start of a comeback," I was envisioning a finish somewhere in the top 50 this week for her at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. Never in my wildest dreams did I entertain the glimmer of a wisp of a hope that this 2-time winner on the LPGA would open the tour's 1st major with 16 greens in regulation, 8 birdies, and a tournament-leading 66, her best score on tour since the opening round of the 2007 Evian Masters. (Let's just forget that she finished 74-82-74 that week).
But Lincicome wasn't the only pleasant surprise for fans of American golfers today, as Christina Kim came out of her early-season hibernation with a 5-birdie 69, but was surpassed by 2 shots by a pair of players looking to start new top 10 streaks after having long ones recently broken: Angela Stanford and Brittany Lang both eagled the par-5 18th to stay 1 behind Lincicome. Other Americans opening impressively included a sick Paula Creamer and a resurgent Moira Dunn (70), as well as Cristie Kerr, Michelle Wie, Natalie Gulbis, Pat Hurst, Nicole Castrale, and Tiffany Joh (71).
That's not to say the international stars of the LPGA didn't throw a few surprises at the leaderboard today, as well. Junior MintJi Young Oh, playing with Lincicome, had a fantastic 67. Others making impressive bouncebacks from recent struggles included Katherine Hull, who shot a 69 despite triple bogeying the par-4 3rd hole in an otherwise bogey-free round, and Jee Young Lee who made walkoff eagles on each side on her way to the same score. Meanwhile, other players whose games have recently been on the upswing, from Kristy McPherson (68) to Lindsey Wright (70) to Se Ri Pak (71) to Inbee Park (71), played very good golf on a very difficult course. And as you'd expect, Ya Ni Tseng (69) made a ton of birdies despite hardly ever finding the fairway off the tee, Song-Hee Kim (69) scrambled her way around Mission Hills, while In-Kyung Kim (70), Sun Young Yoo (70), and Suzann Pettersen (71) did what they needed to to stay under par.
The JLPGA's finest acquitted themselves well today, from #1 Ji-Hee Lee (whose 69 was actually disappointing, as she had it to -5 with 6 holes left to play) to #8 Akiko Fukushima (70) to #3 Yuri Fudoh (71) to #2 Sakura Yokomine (whose walkoff birdie brought her back to 72 after she had suffered a 3-hole bogey train down the stretch).
Less fortunate were #4 Miho Koga (74) and #6 (and LPGA regular) Momoko Ueda (76). They'll be joined by KLPGA stars Ha Neul Kim (75) and Hee Kyung Seo (76) in trying to bounce back quickly. Among the LPGA's hottest players who underperformed today, Ji-Yai Shin is 6 behind Lincicome, Lorena Ochoa and Karrie Webb are 7 back, Angela Park and Seon Hwa Lee 8 back, and Eun-Hee Ji, Ai Miyazato, and Na Yeon Choi 9 back. That's a lot of ground to make up, but if anyone can do it over 54 holes, someone from this bunch surely can.
[Update 1 (11:36 pm): Nice to see Golfweek giving the full major treatment.]
[Update 2 (11:51 pm): Heee-ere's Golf Channel! Nice to see something more than the minute-and-a-half treatment from them.]
[Update 3 (4/3/09, 12:29 am): From Say_You_SeRi's on-course updates, it sure sounds like Pak could easily have gone low yesterday.]
[Update 4 (12:41 am): Golf Channel's Shag Bag blog is out in force at Mission Hills, too. Can Randall Mell outdo Beth Ann Baldry and Sean Martin at Golfweek's Tour Blog?]
[Update 5 (10:22 am): Nice job as usual from Hound Dog with his 1st-round recap, but he also did some great detective work in figuring out that Karen Stupples had to have an emergency appendectomy last week.]
[Update 6 (2:56 pm): Jay Busbee gives a quick and well-done overview of day 1.]
A few puzzlers for you all as we head into the pre-Masters frenzy that consistently overshadows the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
Why is it that Jason Sobel knows how to write a great piece on the coming changing of the guard in the world of men's professional golf, as heralded by Rory McIlroy, Danny Lee, and Ryo Ishikawa, but nobody knows how to write about the exact same thing that's been happening on the LPGA over the last several years--except to whine about the lack of American dominance? Recent writing on the LPGA has felt like a bad flashback to the late '90s--anyone remember how golf journalists then were more anxious than excited at the fact that the international trio of Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, and Se Ri Pak was pushing a generation of great American stars down the leaderboard? Where's the journalist today to declare that the transnationalism of the LPGA's Young Guns and New Blood is something to be celebrated?
It stands to reason that Ron Sirak would be your man for the job. Why, then, didn't he save his column on the holes in the LPGA's schedule for next week and produce as good a preview of the competition then to come in the very strong field at the J Golf Phoenix International last week as good as his Kraft Nabisco Championship preview this one? (Although even in the recent one it would have been great to end with a look at the current contenders as searching as his look at the course and the ways past champions won on it. Is he worried about what Brent Kelley has recently noted--that the LPGA's 1st major has no clear favorite?) The irony here is that Jon Show, who's done as much as anyone to document the LPGA's financial crisis, came out with the most optimistic article in recent memory on the LPGA's prospects the very same week Sirak decided to write on the schedule rather than the players in Phoenix.
Look, Sirak is a talented writer, as his profile of twin sisters Aree and Naree Song shows. But when is he going to get comfortable with the fact that he can't just replicate his success with Annika Sorenstam today with Michelle Wie? With the rise of Ji-Yai Shin, Ya Ni Tseng, Seon Hwa Lee, and Angela Park, joined by another couple of dozen international golfers international players who are capable of winning any given week (and, yes, naturalized U.S. citizen Park is joined by Morgan Pressel, Brittany Lang, Jane Park, Vicky Hurst, and, yes, Wie, to name a few Americans who have already excelled in this cohort), golf journalists who focus on the LPGA have to get a handle on more players and story lines than just the stuff that flies on the PGA: the awesomeness of Tiger's awesome awesomeness and the follow-the-will'o'wisp search for a legitimate rival for him. This is most definitely the Ochoa Era on the LPGA, but the PGA's future is the LPGA's present: that changing of the guard that Sobel wrote about coming in the next 10 years there is happening here right now. When will Sirak write about that?
Speaking of present and future PGA revolutionaries, I want to give credit to Jaime Diaz and Max Adler for writing fantastic profiles of Tiger's mom Tida (in the great Steve Elling tradition) and Danny Lee, respectively. Don't get me wrong, Corina Knoll got some great tidbits in her idiot's guide to identifying some of the top players of Korean descent on the LPGA (outdoing Matt Cooper's fine survey), but wouldn't it be nice for some of them to get the long-form treatment? Until then, we'll just have to endure more great American hope stories, I guess.
[Update 1 (4/3/09, 12:34 am): Hey, is Randall Mell a MH reader? Probably not, but nice job on the Ochoa-Shin pairing and its larger significance, Randall!]
It's major time on the LPGA this week! With Hound Dog's excellent preview of the Kraft Nabisco Championship joined by a stepped-up local media effort (led by LarryBohannan) and posts from large-traffic golf blogs (such as Devil Ball Golf and Golf Girl), the attention level on the LPGA is much higher than usual, although less than it would be if the KNC came after rather than before the Masters (for Exhibit A, I give you Steve Elling and Ross Devonport). One thing I'm particularly excited about is that we're finally having an event where the historical stats and tournament history matter, so I don't just have to go by my hot list and guesswork. Here are my picks:
1. Ochoa 2. Tseng 3. Kerr 4. Stanford 5. Pak 6. Park Angela 7. Webb 8. Shin 9. Ji 10. Kim Song-Hee 11. Pettersen 12. Miyazato
Alts: Choi Na Yeon, Lang, Creamer
With a field this awesome--including top amateurs Tiffany Joh, Azahara Munoz, Candace Schepperle, and Alexis Thompson, Jennifer Johnson, JLPGA greats Yuri Fudoh, Akiko Fukushima, Ji Hee Lee, Miho Koga, and Sakura Yokomine, KLPGA stars Ha Neul Kim and Hee Kyung Seo, and even top LETers Gwladys Nocera and Martina Eberl--literally anything can happen. What thickens the plot even more is the way the tournament organizers set up the pairings--with such a limited field, the players are going off in pairs from day 1.
Off the 10th tee at 8:01 am, for instance, Wie and Miyazato should get the slightest bit of media and spectator attention, allowing Ha Neul Kim and Miho Koga to go off the 1st 22 minutes later comparatively incognito. And those aren't even among the prime-time pairings! Where to start with them? How about off the back in the late morning?
Start Time: 8:49 AM Lorena Ochoa Ji-Yai Shin
Start Time: 8:57 AM Ya Ni Tseng Natalie Gulbis
Start Time: 9:05 AM Angela Stanford Louise Friberg
Start Time: 9:13 AM Ji Young Oh Brittany Lincicome
Start Time: 9:21 AM Leta Lindley Seon Hwa Lee
Start Time: 9:29 AM Brittany Lang Inbee Park
Or maybe those going off the front in the early afternoon?
Start Time: 12:00 PM Paula Creamer Pat Hurst
Start Time: 12:08 PM Cristie Kerr Juli Inkster
Start Time: 12:16 PM Momoko Ueda Karrie Webb
Start Time: 12:24 PM Jane Park Morgan Pressel
Start Time: 12:32 PM Nicole Castrale Na Yeon Choi
Start Time: 12:40 PM Jee Young Lee Michele Redman
But what about those going off the back opposite them?
Start Time: 12:00 PM Sun Young Yoo Rachel Hetherington
Start Time: 12:08 PM Wendy Ward Christina Kim
Start Time: 12:16 PM Young Kim Candie Kung
Start Time: 12:24 PM Eun-Hee Ji Katherine Hull
Start Time: 12:32 PM Suzann Pettersen Grace Park
Start Time: 12:40 PM Helen Alfredsson Laura Diaz
Or those going off the front in the late morning:
Start Time: 8:49 AM Song-Hee Kim Silvia Cavalleri
Start Time: 8:57 AM Mi Hyun Kim In-Kyung Kim
Start Time: 9:05 AM Stacy Prammanasudh Liselotte Neumann
[Update 1 (6:28 am): Definitely give the Seoul Sisters.com KNC thread a look-see this week. The gang is going all out and Tim Maitland, whose work at the HSBC I so admired, is giving inside scoops galore!]
[Update 2 (6:52 am): Given how fired up Momoko Ueda is over Japan's huge victory in the World Baseball Classic, I wonder if we'll be seeing something special this week from the Japanese contingent!]
It's April Fool's Day today, but I'm still guardedly hopeful that Golf Channel's tribute to Se Ri Pak during last week's event in Phoenix was no joke.
You never can tell with GC, it seems. They pander as bad as anyone in the golfy media to the notion that the only LPGA members who deserve mention on TV (much less space on the highlights reel) are named Michelle, Lorena, and Paula (and sometimes Natalie, Suzann, Cristie, and Morgan). And they sure seem to have their own unofficial Asian exclusion act when it comes to highlights. Thankfully, between the LPGA's 2009 Performance Chart and stats pages, anyone can look and see who really are the hottest golfers (atsui), the coldest (samui), and those on the verge of breaking through (daijo bu). That's no joke, particularly heading into the LPGA's 1st major of 2009.
Atsui
1. AngelaStanford: Yes, Stanford's 9-event top 10 streak ended in Phoenix, but with 3 wins, 9 top 10s, and no finish worse than 15th in her last 10 events, she's still the hottest player in the world of women's golf in my book.
2. Ji-Yai Shin: Just missed a great chance to get her 5th win in her last 10 LPGA starts last week in Phoenix. It took a Hall of Famer to deny her. Read those 2 sentences again and you'll see why some have called her the favorite in this season's Player of the Year race.
3. LorenaOchoa: It's official. The era of Ochoa's effortless dominance on the LPGA is over. But you know what? She's still my favorite to win the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
4. CristieKerr: Her hot streak dates back to last May, for in her last 22 tournaments, she's only finished outside the top 20 twice (her worst being a T34 in China), while garnering 12 top 10s (including 2 in a row), including a win and a runner-up in that stretch.
5. Ya NiTseng: Her 67-67 finish on the weekend in Phoenix was the best in the field. Even though she couldn't chase down the leaders, that charge was reminiscent of how she won her 1st major. With a 7-event LPGA top-20 streak and no finish worse than 11th in 2009 on any tour (even with food poisoning down under!), she's so due for win #2--could it come this week?
Honorable Mention:
KarrieWebb: Her dramatic win last week put an exclamation point on a 4-event top-20 run in which she's also gotten a runner-up (to the woman she beat in Phoenix!).
AngelaPark: With 2 top 3s in her 1st 3 official starts on the LPGA in '09 and 4 top 10s in her last 5, she's one of the players to beat at the KNC.
Eun-HeeJi: She's now got 3 top 10s in 5 events this season and top 20s in her last 7 starts.
PaulaCreamer: Apparently, Mexico was crueler to her than I had first thought, for she couldn't even start in Phoenix. [Update (5:07 am): Whoops, Reuters reports it all started in Asia.]
KatherineHull: 2 bad results in a row and only 1 good one to start her season on the LPGA are not what she needs headed into the year's 1st major. Could her run of great play be over?
Jee YoungLee: Had trouble with Papago, but look for her to bounce back at the KNC from her T27.
SuzannPettersen: She's back, even if her knee is bothering her.
Song-HeeKim: Don't look now, but she's got 2 top 10s in a row and is playing great on Sundays.
Sun YoungYoo. Riding a 4-event top-20 streak, which could easily have been a top-10 streak.
AiMiyazato: She's playing the best golf of her career since at least 2006, yet hasn't even gone low like her birdie rate suggests she's capable of. There's a reason she hasn't finished worse than 26th all season on the LPGA and has garnered 5 top 10s on the LPGA, ALPG/LET, and JLPGA in a run dating back to last November.
Samui
1. Julieta Granada: Another badly missed cut for her, this time in Phoeniz.
2. Shiho Oyama: She's making Shinobu Moromizato's struggles when she tried the LPGA a couple of years back a little more understandable. But she started slow last season on the JLPGA and got hotter as the weather did.
4. Minea Blomqvist: Missed her 1st cut of the season in Phoenix, now making it 4 out of 5 LPGA events she's finished 50th or worse. Sure, she's a streaky player and could bounce back big any time, but this long a bad run is unlike her.
5. Brittany Lincicome: Has now made 2 cuts in a row and stayed at par or better over her last 3 rounds. Could this be the start of a comeback?
Dishonorable Mention: Ashleigh Simon has been MIA on the LPGA and ALPG/LET in '09, but I've decided to take someone dealing with an injury off the main cold list.
Daijo Bu
1. Na YeonChoi: Still on the edge of LPGA greatness. Can she break through in the tour's 1st major of the year?
2. BrittanyLang: Needs to get back in the saddle again!
3. JanePark: Hopefully that MC in Phoenix was just a blip.
4. Se RiPak: Is Pak back? All signs point to "yes"! If she ever puts together 4 good rounds in a row, watch out for her to join Karrie Webb in the Hall of Famer winner's circle this season.
5. Kristy McPherson is quietly assembling a solid start to her season, with 2 top 20s in a row and no finish worse than 31st. While other "daijo bu" candidates Seon Hwa Lee, Momoko Ueda, Meena Lee, Teresa Lu, and Mi Hyun Kim missed the cut in Phoenix, McPherson kept chugging along, definitively washing the taste of a disappointing late fall Asian Swing out of her mouth in the process. She keeps this up, and she won't be #8 in her rookie class much longer.
Honorable Mention: Lindsey Wright has put together 2 top 20s in a row and hasn't finished outside the top 30 in her last 4 starts. She started last season as the hottest Australian on the LPGA before suffering an injury, so looks like she's on the mend and on the comeback trail.
So with the KLPGA season kicking off soon, the JLPGA season getting into gear, and the LPGA taking two weeks off this month, this list will soon start looking a lot less LPGA-centric. We'll get a sneak peek at several of the top Korean and Japanese players at the KNC this week. Enjoy!
