Momoko Got it Done, in Tournament Twenty-One. Lorena Ochoa Invitational Preview

Congratulations go out this week to Momoko Ueda for winning the Mizuno Classic.  It was her first career win as an LPGA member. For more details see Bangkokbobby and The Constructivist.

The LPGA moves from Asia to Mexico this week with the Lorena Ochoa Invitational.
Here are some details:

Course: Guadalajara County Club
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
Defending Champion: I.K. Kim
2011 Winning Score: 69-68-68-64=269 (-19)

Final Field: 36 Players
Par: 72
Yardage: 6644
Purse: $1 Million

You may recall that this is the tournament where I.K. Kim gave away her entire winning purse to charity last year. Among the players not participating this week include Na Yeon Choi, Jiyai Shin, Song Hee Kim, Inbee Park, Sun Young Yoo, and Karrie Webb.

The Titleholders Championship:
Qualifying this past weekend were Momoko Ueda, Pornanong Phatlum, and Christina Kim.

There are only 3 women in this week's field that have not yet qualified. They are Juli Inkster, Beatriz Recari, and Natalie Gulbis. All they will have to do is finish the tournament to get in.

Rolex Ranking Mover of the Week:
Momoko Ueda moves from #81 to #54.

Battle for 2012 Sybase Match Play spots:
There was some very big moves this week, but none bigger than Momoko Ueda, who moved from outside the top 48 on the money list to #33. She now has a spot wrapped up.

Here are the ladies who are still fighting for one of the 48 automatic spots.

44 Wendy Ward - $198,103.00
45 Vicky Hurst - $197,667.00
46 Ryann O'Toole - $188,990.00
47 Eun-Hee Ji - $181,743.00
48 Paige Mackenzie - $180,383.00
49 Natalie Gulbis - $171,730.00
50 Pat Hurst - $170,348.00
51 Christel Boeljon - $166,370.00
52 Mina Harigae - $166,184.00
53 Mi Hyun Kim - $161,849.00
54 Amanda Blumenherst - $158,868
55 Kristy McPherson - $157,025.00

The only player on the above list playing this week is Natalie Gulbis. Since she got in as a sponsor's exemption, the money she earns will not be official money, and will not count towards Sybase. It will all come down to the final event the following week.

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Mizuno Classic Sunday: Playoff Time! Feng vs. Ueda

Shanshan Feng fired a bogey-free 65 in the final round of the Mizuno Classic to catch 2nd-round leader Momoko Ueda at -16 and force a playoff.  I'll have more when I know more!

[Update 1 (2:07 am - 1 "fall back" hour):  While I wait for the results to be posted online, it's worth noting that a bogey on the 15th hole kept Na Yeon Choi from tying Sakura Yokomine's tournament record at Kintetsu Kashikojima Country Club--and, more important, kept her 1 shot out of the playoff.  Failing to birdie either par 5 on the back also played a role, but she put on a great charge with birdies on her final 2 holes.  A few minutes later, Kyeong Bae matched Choi's 64 from the last group off the back, moving from the cellar to the middle of the pack, and 1-upping Christel Boeljon, who dropped a 65 on the field from the 1st group off the front.  Stacy Lewis also made an early move with yet another bogey-free 65, but it seems those early charges just woke Ueda up.  After starting out with a birdie and 1 bogey in her 1st 7 holes, she got it to -15 with birdies on 9 and 10.  But even though she stalled there on the back, when Feng got it to -16 on the par-3 17th in the group ahead of her, Ueda responded with a clutch birdie on the par-5 16th.  Those birdies helped make moot Catriona Matthew's great start--she birdied 6 of her 1st 10 holes to get to -14--but like Sakura Yokomine (who bogeyed her last 2 holes in a row after getting to -14 on the 13th) and Mina Harigae (whose bogeys on the last holes on each side undermined her 4 birdie run over a 5-hole stretch midway through the back that almost brought her into contention), Matthew bogeyed the last hole to cap off a birdieless stretch run over her last 8 holes.]

[Update 2 (1:09 am):  Ueda won the playoff!  Congrats to Momo-chan for her 1st win as an LPGA member and 2nd at this event!]

[Update 3 (10:15 am):  Asian Golf Daily has the details on the playoff.  Straight from LPGA.com.]

[Update 4 (1:04 pm):  Here are the final results from the final round (in Japanese).  Ueda's out-of-nowhere win brings her from #44 to #23 on the JLPGA money list, while Ji-Yai Shin's Sunday 66 and top-10 finish gets her barely into the top 50 and Sun-Ju Ahn's closing 68 helps her maintain and even extend her lead on some of her nearest chasers:

1. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥116.05M
2. Chie Arimura ￥83.27M
3. Sakura Yokomine ￥76.87M
4. Ji-Hee Lee ￥74.01M
5. Yukari Baba ￥66.14M
6. Miki Saiki ￥62.14M
7. Shanshan Feng ￥58.75M
8. Ritsuko Ryu ￥56.22M
9. Yuri Fudoh ￥55.84M
10. Shiho Oyama ￥50.50M
11. Mayu Hattori ￥44.82M
12. Ayako Uehara ￥44.53M
13. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥41.57M
14. Saiki Fujita ￥39.06M
15. Kumiko Kaneda ￥38.07M
16. Hiromi Mogi ￥35.97M
17. Rikako Morita ￥35.59M
18. Rui Kitada ￥35.27M
19. Na-Ri Kim ￥33.30M
20. Asako Fujimoto ￥31.94M
21. Bo-Bae Song ￥31.72M
22. Junko Omote ￥31.11M
23. Momoko Ueda ￥29.93M
24. Yuko Mitsuka ￥29.37M
25. Ji-Woo Lee ￥28.09M
26. Li-Ying Ye ￥26.87M
27. Akane Iijima ￥25.87M
28. Na-Ri Lee ￥25.48M
29. Inbee Park ￥25.11M
30. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥24.87M
31. Ah-Reum Hwang ￥24.41M
32. Teresa Lu ￥23.83M
33. Esther Lee ￥22.95M
34. Akiko Fukushima ￥22.63M
35. Soo-Yun Kang ￥21.90M
36. Eun-A Lim ￥21.79M
37. Kaori Aoyama ￥21.70M
38. Eun-Bi Jang ￥21.05M
39. Young Kim ￥20.82M
40. Shinobu Moromizato ￥17.88M
41. Bo-Mee Lee ￥17.62M
42. Yumiko Yoshida ￥17.11M
43. Nikki Campbell ￥16.58M
44. Tamie Durdin ￥15.98M
45. Megumi Kido ￥15.45M
46. Nachiyo Ohtani ￥15.04M
47. Miho Koga ￥14.87M
48. Ji-Yai Shin ￥14.48M
49. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥14.22M
50. So-Hee Kim ￥13.81M

Looks like Ueda, Feng, Shiho Oyama, and Inbee Park are playing in the Ito-En Ladies next week, along with former LPGAers Na-Ri Kim, Teresa Lu, Shinobu Moromizato, Young Kim, Soo-Yun Kang, and Tamie Durdin.  Ai Miyazato is #68 on the money list, so it'll be interesting to see if the JLPGA forces her to play in Q-School (which somewhere Meena Lee and Hee Young Park will have to go if they want to maintain their dual memberships in 2012).  This coming week, Ai-sama goes to Mexico for the Lorena Ochoa Invitational, still over $55K shy of the $1M mark on the LPGA money list.  Here's hoping she bounces back from a tough week quickly!]

[Update 5 (6:44 pm):  bangkokbobby found some great photos and video--very dramatic and emotional win!]

Mizuno Classic Saturday: Momoko Ueda and Sakura Yokomine Blow by the Field

Momoko Ueda birdied 6 of her last 8 holes, including her last 4 in a row, to fire a bogey-free 64 on moving day and take the lead at -13 in the Mizuno Classic, but she didn't shoot the low round of the day.  That honor belonged to the golfer sitting in 2nd place 3 shots behind her, the 2009 JLPGA money-list title holder Sakura Yokomine, who birdied half the holes she played today for a bogey-free 63.  Call it a blast from the past but don't call it a comeback:  all of a sudden the two biggest names on the JLPGA besides Ai Miyazato (who's in the cellar this week and will need a good Sunday just to get back to even par) are going to be in a dogfight for their 9th (Ueda) and 19th (Yokomine) wins on tour--and 1st in what feels like forever.

That's not to say Sunday's final round will definitely come down to a 2-player shootout.  Shanshan Feng's 7-birdie 67 brought her to -9, tied with Mayu Hattori, who 1-upped her with a bogey-free 66.  Both youngsters are looking for their 3rd career JLPGA wins tomorrow.  [Correction:  Hattori has 3 already--thanks, John!]  LPGA super-soph Mina Harigae, who's playing on the JLPGA for the 1st time that I know of, matched Feng's 7-birdie 65 to make it a trio 4 behind Ueda.  How big a deal would it be for a Japanese-American golfer to win the Mizuno?  Just a little further down the leaderboard are In-Kyung Kim, Catriona Matthew, and 1st-round co-leader Teresa Lu at -8, Na Yeon Choi, Chie Arimura, Hee Kyung Seo, Akane Iijima, and Na-Ri Kim at -7, and Azahara Munoz, Ayako Uehara, Ryann O'Toole, and Asako Fujimoto at -6.  Sure, they'd need to put together final rounds as momentous as Yokomine's and Ueda's moving day feats and get some help from those ahead of them on the leaderboard to get into contention on the back 9, but stranger things have happened.

What's really surprised me is how low the scoring has been.  If you had told me Thursday that Stacy Lewis would be at -5, Ji-Yai Shin, Karrie Webb, Mika Miyazato, and Hee Young Park at -4, Sun-Ju Ahn at -3, and Mi-Jeong Jeon at -2, I would have expected them to be among the leaders on a bunched leaderboard.  Instead, Lewis is the only player in the top 20 from this illustrious group after 36 holes.  With Yukari Baba at -1, Inbee Park at E, Kumiko Kaneda at +1, Miki Saiki at +2, and Ai Miyazato at +4, I would have expected the weather and scoring conditions to be forbidding.  Instead, Momoko Ueda has a real chance to break Ji-Yai Shin's 54-hole scoring record at Kintetsu Kashikojima Country Club of -18 tomorrow.  Heck, she's already matched her own winning total from 2007!  And the only thing Yokomine did was tie the 18-hole tournament record--oh yeah, and put the lowest round ever in competition at KKCC into the record books.

So let's see what feats the leading pair of 25-year-olds can perform tomorrow.  It's an adage that it's hard to play well after going super-low, but given right now I wouldn't put anything past Momoko and Sakura!

[Update 1 (4:00 am):  The AP is in the house, beating me to the punch on 2nd-round coverage!  Reading around at Seoul Sisters.com, I saw that dual JLPGA-KLPGA member Bo-Mee Lee is in contention on the KLPGA this week.  Also, if I'm understanding correctly from other sources, Ji-Yai Shin and Ai Miyazato seem to believe that 6 events on the JLPGA this year is enough to secure their cards for 2012 (whether or not they make the top 50 on the money list??).]

[Update 2 (9:11 pm):  Nice catches by bangkokbobby!]

Mizuno Classic Friday: Teresa Lu, Akane Iijima, Ah-Reum Hwang Go Low

Scoring was low in the 1st round of the Mizuno Classic, as Ah-Reum Hwang set the pace by twice birdieing 3 holes in a row on her way to a 7-birdie 66, Akane Iijima responded with a bogey-free 66 of her own, and ex-LPGAer Teresa Lu caught them by birdieing 5 holes in a row as she made the turn onto the front 9 of the Kintetsu Kashikojima Country Club.  Momoko Ueda, who won here in 2007 but has been struggling the last 2 seasons, also fired a bogey-free 31 on the front, but offset her 2 birdies on the back with 2 bogeys to remain 1 shot behind the co-leaders. 

With 23 players breaking 70--including Stacy Lewis, In-Kyung Kim, Shanshan Feng, Azahara Munoz, Catriona Matthew, Mina Harigae, and Ayako Uehara at 68 and Na Yeon Choi, 2-time winner here Ji-Yai Shin, Hee-Won Han, Ritsuko Ryu, Mayu Hattori, Na-Ri Kim, Hyun-Ju Shin, Ryann O'Toole, Vicky Hurst, and Pornanong Phatlum at 69--this is still anyone's ball game.  And with JLPGA money-list leader Sun-Ju Ahn only 4 back, along with Mika Miyazato, Shiho Oyama, Hee Kyung Seo, Candie Kung, and Yukari Baba--not to mention Karrie Webb, Chie Arimura, Sakura Yokomine, Mi-Jeong Jeon, Hee Young Park, Christina Kim, and Tiffany Joh within 5--the leaders had better keep going low over their last 36 holes.

But some big-name players have their work cut out for them as they head into the weekend.  Mi Hyun Kim and Meena Lee found themselves 3 behind playing partner Hee-Won Han and 6 off the lead at the end of the day, despite Han's shooting a birdie-less 37 on the front (their back).  Ai Miyazato, Inbee Park, and Miki Saiki could only manage 73s, despite an eagle from Saiki on the 1st hole (her 10th); it was a double each from the once-dominant dual LPGA-JLPGA members on the back that did them in.  Meanwhile, Song-Hee Kim, Eun-Hee Ji, Young Kim, and Kumiko Kaneda put themselves near the bottom of the leaderboard at +2.  (Only Jimin Kang had a worse opening day, a 6-bogey 77.)

Still, there's hope for everyone in the field.  Nobody went super-low on both sides.  Just as Lu, Hwang, and Ueda feasted on the front (along with Na-Ri Kim, Harigae, Eun-A Lim, and Asako Fujimoto), it was Iijima, Jeon, Han, Matthew, Uehara, and Phatlum who caught fire on the back.  Plenty of players squandered fantastic moments, as well.  Fujimoto birdied 4 in a row mid-way through the front (her back), but bogeyed 2 of her last 4 holes to settle for a 33 on the side and a 69 overall.  Oyama eagled the short par-5 13th (her 4th hole) but gave it right back with a double on the long par-4 15th; although she buckled down right afterward and player her last 12 holes -3 and bogey-free, imagine how low she could have gone if she had kept her momentum going without that interruption.  Contrast that with co-leader Hwang, who got off to a rocky start but played her last 15 holes -7 and bogey-free, and you have what could end up being a margin of victory.

But let's see what happens on moving day.  With the top 3 Koreans in the world--Choi, Shin, and Ahn--chasing In-Kyung Kim, who always seems to rev it up at the very end of the season, there's a great chance they'll draft each other to the top of the leaderboard.  The pairings have been shuffled by score, so it'll be interesting to see whether the relatively unheralded co-leaders can keep the pedal to the metal from the final group on Saturday.  Stay tuned!

Mizuno Classic Preview, Predictions, Pairings

With Ya Ni Tseng having wrapped up victories in all the major LPGA season-long races and taking a well-deserved week off after winning her 10th event on a major women's tour last week, this week's Mizuno Classic is much more significant for the JLPGA and the golfers who are members of both tours than it is for the top women's tour on the planet.  As Hound Dog and Tony Jesselli document, many of the LPGA's top players are joining Tseng in skipping this tournament.  Amy Yang, who won the last KLPGA major of the year last week, is probably the biggest surprise among the many no-shows to me, although I agree with HD that it's odd that Paula Creamer has never played the Mizuno.  That's why I find it strange that LPGA.com's preview, which rightly focuses on '08 and '10 champion Ji-Yai Shin and Mizuno girl Stacy Lewis (along with Ai and Mika Miyazato), never mentions Na Yeon Choi, who's making a strong end-of-season push to follow up last year's #1 ranking in both winnings and scoring average with a #2 ranking this year.  It's no surprise, though, that LPGA.com also failed to focus on what the Mizuno means to the JLPGA's season-long races and to the many dual LPGA-JLPGA members in the field.  So let me try to fill those gaps.

Chie Arimura's win last week means that Sun-Ju Ahn has not yet clinched her 2nd-straight JLPGA money-list title and Player of the Year award.  With Ji-Hee Lee playing steady but not spectacular golf and Sakura Yokomine struggling by her lofty standards, the most likely showdown for this year's top spot will be between Ahn and Arimura.  Ahn, who has 4 wins, 2 runner-ups (both coming in her last 4 starts), 8 top 5s, and 11 top 10s in only 17 JLPGA starts in 2011, is coming off a rest week and looking to improve on her T18 finish here last year (10 shots behind Shin and 1 shot behind Arimura).  Arimura, meanwhile, has 3 wins, a silver, 2 bronzes, 7 top 5s, and 13 top 10s in 21 JLPGA starts--and perhaps even more important has also played great in her LPGA starts this year, with a near-win at the HSBC Women's Champions and a T7 at the Kraft Nabisco Championship (to go with an uncharacteristic missed cut at the Wegmans LPGA Championship and surprising no-shows at the Evian and Ricoh Women's British Open).  However, before last week's win she had endured her longest run without a top 10 finish all year, most likely caused by a wrist injury that lead to her actually having to miss an event. 

So if Arimura doesn't step it up this week, who from the JLPGA is most likely to instead?  Yokomine (who has a gold, a silver, 4 bronzes, 8 top 5s, and 14 top 10s in 24 JLPGA starts but has finished outside the top 20 7 times, is coming off 2 straight starts in which she failed to crack the top 30, and hasn't made the top 10 in the Mizuno in the last 3 years) is actually something of a long shot, despite the fact that she's also coming in rested.  Lee (with a gold, 4 3 silvers, 8 top 5s, and 16 top 10s in 23 JLPGA starts) may seem like a better bet, but her recent record at the Mizuno has been even less impressive than Yokomine's.  So I'd focus on players like Shiho Oyama, who seems finally to have found her game after a long recovery and comeback from elbow surgery (she has a gold, a silver, and a bronze highlighting her ongoing 5-event top-10 streak and is also coming off a week off), Mi-Jeong Jeon (who finished T5 here in 2009 and is riding an 8-event top 20 streak that includes a runner-up finish a few weeks ago), and Yukari Baba (who has a gold, a silver, and a T4 in her last 5 starts and finished T8 here last year).  Everyone else in the top 20 on the money list is either absent (Yuri Fudoh), in a nosedive (Miki Saiki), struggling (Hiromi Mogi, Rui Kitada), inconsistent (Ayako Uehara, Saiki Fujita, ex-LPGAer Na-Ri Kim, and '09 champion Bo-Bae Song), or inexperienced (Ritsuko Ryu, Mayu Hattori, Kumiko Kaneda, and Rikako Morita).  And ex-LPGAers Young Kim, Soo-Yun Kang, and Teresa Lu just haven't had very good 2011s.

Which is my cue to finally bring up Shanshan Feng.  I held off on mentioning the #10 player on the money list, the winner of the Meiji and Miyagi events this year, the runner-up in the Konica Minolta Cup (a JLPGA major), and a T3 finisher last week because she belongs in a discussion of the dual LPGA-JLPGA members in the Mizuno field.  While her rookie season on the JLPGA hasn't been quite as impressive as Inbee Park's last year (she had 2 wins and 6 runner-up finishes in 14 starts), a Feng win here would certainly make me rethink that judgment.  Park, meanwhile, has done little to follow up her season-opening win on the JLPGA, but even in the midst of a mini-sophomore jinx, it's hard not to be high on someone who finished T8 and T5 at the Mizuno the last 2 years.  The crazy thing is, however, that the rest of the dual members are actually fighting to keep their JLPGA cards.  2007 Mizuno champion Momoko Ueda has 4 top 10s in 12 JLPGA starts this year, but she's missed the cut a shocking 5 times and failed to crack the top 40 twice, so she's actually lucky to be #44 on the money list right now (the top 50 keep their cards; the rest go to the final stage of Q-School to compete against the qualifiers from this week's 2nd stage).  Even 2-time Mizuno champion Ji-Yai Shin has been struggling on the JLPGA for the 1st time in her career--not only is she #54 on the money list, but she also needs a win this week to qualify for the season-ending Ricoh Cup and get the 7th start she needs to meet the tour's minimum appearance requirement.  Ai Miyazato is in the exact same boat, except she's even lower on the money list (at #69), while even if Meena Lee (#103) were to win, she definitely hasn't played enough on tour to keep her card without going back to Q-School.  And Harukyo Nomura, who's fighting to finish high enough on both tours' money lists to keep her dual membership in 2012 (she's #94 on the LPGA and #73 on the JLPGA), didn't even qualify for the Mizuno.  That leaves Hee Young Park, who's #91 on the money list in 6 starts.  Can the 2010 Q-School champion make enough money in her 7th start of 2011 to avoid a return to Q-School?

Here's my best guess as to how things will shake out this week for my entry in the PakPicker competition at Seoul Sisters.com:

1. Miyazato Mika
2. Choi Na Yeon
3. Arimura
4. Oyama
5. Feng
6. Park Hee Young
7. Shin Ji-Yai
8. Miyazato Ai
9. Park Inbee
10. Lewis
11. Ahn
12. Jeon

Alts:  Munoz; Kim In-Kyung; Baba

The pairings for Friday's opening round are already out.  Here's a baker's dozen of the ones I'm most excited about:

1st tee, 9:50 am: Na Yeon Choi, Ai Miyazato, Chie Arimura
1st tee, 9:30 am: Karrie Webb, Mika Miyazato, Hee Kyung Seo
1st tee, 10:00 am: Ji-Yai Shin, Sun-Ju Ahn, Azahara Munoz
10th tee, 9:20 am: Hee Young Park, Candie Kung, Tiffany Joh
1st tee, 9:40 am: Stacy Lewis, Sakura Yokomine, Beatriz Recari
10th tee, 9:40 am: Mi Hyun Kim, Hee-Won Han, Meena Lee
1st tee, 9:20 am: Inbee Park, Eun-Hee Ji, Ryann O'Toole
10th tee, 9:30 am: Shanshan Feng, Catriona Matthew, Chella Choi
10th tee, 10:00 am: In-Kyung Kim, Jimin Kang, Mindy Kim
10th tee, 8:30 am: Mi-Jeong Jeon, Yukari Baba, Miki Saiki
10th tee, 8:50 am: Na-Ri Kim, Pornanong Phatlum, Cindy LaCrosse
1st tee, 9:10 am: Momoko Ueda, Mayu Hattori, Paige Mackenzie
10th tee, 9:50 am: Song-Hee Kim, Vicky Hurst, Amy Hung

I'm sadly not surprised that Golf Channel couldn't afford to buy TV rights from the JLPGA and Japanese TV.  I'm too busy at work to try to find an online feed, but I will go back to doing round-by-round reports as early as possible.  Stay tuned!

[Update 1 (5:42 am):  Here's a photo of Tiger with Miho Koga, Shinobu Moromizato, and Rui Kitada at their charity outing yesterday.  And here's Ward Clayton's latest Stats and Stuff post from LPGA.com.]