Mika Miyazato has been knocking on the door of her 1st career LPGA victory all summer, but to break through it she's going to need a great final round today in the Safeway Classic. She holds a 2-shot lead on last week's winner So Yeon Ryu, a 3-shot lead on Evian Masters champion Inbee Park and 14-time LPGA winner Cristie Kerr, and a 4-shot lead on a resurgent world #1 Ya Ni Tseng, 9-time LPGA winner Paula Creamer, and rookie Sydnee Michaels. Given that defending champion Suzann Pettersen came back from 9 down on Na Yeon Choi last year, it's impossible to count out the likes of Amy Yang and Hee-Won Han (5 back), Michelle Wie, Momoko Ueda, and Alison Walshe (6 back), Choi, In-Kyung Kim, Brittany Lang, and a host of others 7 off the pace, Karine Icher, Guilia Sergas, and Lizette Salas 8 behind, and, yes, Pettersen, again 9 down with 18 to go.
Mikan's played fantastic golf since enduring a late-spring mini-slump, which she has attributed more to mental issues and self-imposed pressures than to anything to do with her swing or her game. And once she got her head on straight in early June, she finished T3 at the ShopRite, T2 at the Wegmans LPGA Championship, T2 at the Walmart, T7 at the U.S. Women's Open, T16 at the Evian Masters, and T7 at the Farr. With just about every aspect of her game clicking this season--she leads the LPGA in driving accuracy, is 8th in greens in regulation, and 10th in putts per green in regulation--the only thing that's been holding her back is an inability to make as many birdies as those who have finished ahead of her (her 3.35 birdies per round rate is much lower than the leaders in that category). Well, this week, she's hitting the fairway over 92% of the time, hitting the green almost 92% of the time, and averaging 6 birdies per round. Translation: she's missed 3 greens and 2 fairways and made only 1 bogey all week, so is riding a 30-hole-and-counting bogey-free run heading into today's round.
Let's see how she handles playing with 2-time winner Ryu in the final group. Scoring has not been fantastic thus far today, with Paige Mackenzie and Stacy Prammanasudh leading the way, at -4 and -3 thus far in their rounds, and -1 the next-best score by a host of golfers, including Ai Miyazato and Stacy Lewis. Wonder if we'll see a real shoot-'em-up or a war of attrition? The way players were finishing out 17 and 18 yesterday, we could see some real disasters and huge swings at the very end of this 54-hole tournament!
Sunday, August 19, 2012
CAT Ladies Overview: Mi-Jeong Jeon Closes with 65 for 20th JLPGA Victory
Mi-Jeong Jeon fired a final-round bogey-free 64 to take the CAT Ladies by 4 shots over Mayu Hattori, Rikako Morita, and Bo-Mee Lee. To build on bangkokbobby's summary, Jeon trailed the trio she ended up beating by 2 shots after the completion of the 2nd round, and even a 3-birdie 33 on the front left her 3 behind Hattori, 2 behind Lee, and 1 behind Morita as they made the turn. Jeon poured it on with birdies on 10, 11, 13, 15, and 18 for a closing 32 that turned the tables on the leaders, who struggled home with a 39 (Hattori), 38 (Lee), and 37 (Morita). Probably the biggest key for Jeon was that she birdied all 5 par 5s today, as her last 3 birdies of the day all came on par 5s.
For the JLPGA's 2012 money list leader, her 20th career victory on tour couldn't have come at a better time. Hattori was (and remains) #3 on the money list and could have pulled within 10 million yen of Jeon with a win. As it is, though, Jeon has now extended her lead to nearly 30 million yen over Sun-Ju Ahn, who dominated the JLPGA the last 2 seasons but who was idle this week. With a scoring average of 69.92 and inconsistent play from most of those immediately following her this season, Jeon is now the 1st 3-time winner on tour.
1. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥91.26M
2. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥61.88M
3. Mayu Hattori ￥57.70M
4. Ritsuko Ryu ￥52.22M
5. Chie Arimura ￥52.08M
6. Miki Saiki ￥50.21M
7. Ji-Hee Lee ￥45.57M
8. Bo-Mee Lee ￥44.56M
9. Sakura Yokomine ￥41.11M
10. Shanshan Feng ￥40.48M
11. Rikako Morita ￥39.14M
12. Yumiko Yoshida ￥31.34M
13. Inbee Park ￥29.62M
14. Hiromi Mogi ￥29.59M
15. Soo-Yun Kang ￥28.64M
16. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥28.22M
17. Yuri Fudoh ￥26.69M
18. Mihoko Iseri ￥26.56M
19. Kaori Ohe ￥24.99M
20. Megumi Kido ￥22.44M
21. Esther Lee ￥21.22M
22. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥21.12M
23. Shinobu Moromizato ￥20.35M
24. Yuki Ichinose ￥20.24M
25. Erina Hara ￥18.68M
26. Airi Saitoh ￥17.84M
27. Ayako Uehara ￥17.82M
28. Ji-Yai Shin ￥17.78M
29. Miki Sakai ￥17.10M
30. Yukari Baba ￥17.10M
31. Akane Iijima ￥16.22M
32. Erika Kikuchi ￥16.12M
33. Teresa Lu ￥16.01M
34. Bo-Bae Song ￥15.63M
35. Na-Ri Lee￥15.60M
36. Eun-Bi Jang ￥15.54M
37. Rui Kitada ￥15.34M
38. So-Hee Kim ￥15.34M
39. Young Kim￥15.02M
40. Harukyo Nomura ￥14.48M
41. Na-Ri Kim ￥13.60M
42. Yeo-Jin Kang ￥13.50M
43. Junko Omote￥13.07M
44. Yuko Fukuda ￥12.19M
45. Kumiko Kaneda ￥11.38M
46. Da-Ye Na ￥10.59M
47. Asako Fujimoto￥9.45M
48. Shiho Toyonaga ￥9.34M
49. Natsu Nagai ￥8.97M
50. Li-Ying Ye ￥8.92M
On deck is the Nitori Ladies, which features the return of Sun-Ju Ahn and Ji-Hee Lee to action everyone in the top 10 except Chie Arimura (and of course Shanshan Feng), and a chance for Ritsuko Ryu to defend her title. Jeon won it in 2010, so she's in great position to cross the 100 million yen mark next week, as well. Should be pretty interesting!
For the JLPGA's 2012 money list leader, her 20th career victory on tour couldn't have come at a better time. Hattori was (and remains) #3 on the money list and could have pulled within 10 million yen of Jeon with a win. As it is, though, Jeon has now extended her lead to nearly 30 million yen over Sun-Ju Ahn, who dominated the JLPGA the last 2 seasons but who was idle this week. With a scoring average of 69.92 and inconsistent play from most of those immediately following her this season, Jeon is now the 1st 3-time winner on tour.
1. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥91.26M
2. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥61.88M
3. Mayu Hattori ￥57.70M
4. Ritsuko Ryu ￥52.22M
5. Chie Arimura ￥52.08M
6. Miki Saiki ￥50.21M
7. Ji-Hee Lee ￥45.57M
8. Bo-Mee Lee ￥44.56M
9. Sakura Yokomine ￥41.11M
10. Shanshan Feng ￥40.48M
11. Rikako Morita ￥39.14M
12. Yumiko Yoshida ￥31.34M
13. Inbee Park ￥29.62M
14. Hiromi Mogi ￥29.59M
15. Soo-Yun Kang ￥28.64M
16. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥28.22M
17. Yuri Fudoh ￥26.69M
18. Mihoko Iseri ￥26.56M
19. Kaori Ohe ￥24.99M
20. Megumi Kido ￥22.44M
21. Esther Lee ￥21.22M
22. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥21.12M
23. Shinobu Moromizato ￥20.35M
24. Yuki Ichinose ￥20.24M
25. Erina Hara ￥18.68M
26. Airi Saitoh ￥17.84M
27. Ayako Uehara ￥17.82M
28. Ji-Yai Shin ￥17.78M
29. Miki Sakai ￥17.10M
30. Yukari Baba ￥17.10M
31. Akane Iijima ￥16.22M
32. Erika Kikuchi ￥16.12M
33. Teresa Lu ￥16.01M
34. Bo-Bae Song ￥15.63M
35. Na-Ri Lee￥15.60M
36. Eun-Bi Jang ￥15.54M
37. Rui Kitada ￥15.34M
38. So-Hee Kim ￥15.34M
39. Young Kim￥15.02M
40. Harukyo Nomura ￥14.48M
41. Na-Ri Kim ￥13.60M
42. Yeo-Jin Kang ￥13.50M
43. Junko Omote￥13.07M
44. Yuko Fukuda ￥12.19M
45. Kumiko Kaneda ￥11.38M
46. Da-Ye Na ￥10.59M
47. Asako Fujimoto￥9.45M
48. Shiho Toyonaga ￥9.34M
49. Natsu Nagai ￥8.97M
50. Li-Ying Ye ￥8.92M
On deck is the Nitori Ladies, which features the return of Sun-Ju Ahn and Ji-Hee Lee to action everyone in the top 10 except Chie Arimura (and of course Shanshan Feng), and a chance for Ritsuko Ryu to defend her title. Jeon won it in 2010, so she's in great position to cross the 100 million yen mark next week, as well. Should be pretty interesting!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Recommended Reading: HappyFan on Ryu, Ruthless Mike on Tseng
Just read 2 great--and very different--posts by 2 great bloggers on women's golf. HappyFan puts So Yeon Ryu's win in Toledo in context, while Ruthless Mike puts Ya Ni Tseng's swing under the microscope. Give them a read before you watch the coverage of the 1st round of the Safeway Classic tonight on Golf Channel, ok?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Safeway Classic Preview & Pairings
Just arrived home after spending nine days in Toledo, Ohio. First let me congratulate So Yeon Ryu for her spectacular performance at the Jamie Farr Toledo Classic. Her six consecutive birdies on Sunday left the rest of the field fighting for second place. She is very quickly becoming one of the elite golfers on the LPGA tour.
This week the tour moves to North Plains, Oregon, for the playing of the Safeway Classic Presented by Coca-Cola. My friend and writer for CSNNW.COM, Greg Crawford, points out that the Safeway Classic is the longest running non-major event on the LPGA schedule. It started way back in 1972, as the Portland Classic. Here are some of the details of this event:
Course: Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, Ghost Creek Golf Course
Location: North Plains, Oregon
Defending Champion: Suzann Pettersen
Winning Score: 69-74-64 = 207 (-6)
Final Field: 144 players
Par: 37/35 = 72
Yardage: 6,611 yards
Purse: $1,500,000
This will be one of the strongest fields of the year. My strength of field rating is 67%. The only non-major with a stronger field was the Evian Masters. Every healthy top player on the LPGA priority list will be in attendance.
Here are the pairings for the first 2 days.
Here are the television times:
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This week the tour moves to North Plains, Oregon, for the playing of the Safeway Classic Presented by Coca-Cola. My friend and writer for CSNNW.COM, Greg Crawford, points out that the Safeway Classic is the longest running non-major event on the LPGA schedule. It started way back in 1972, as the Portland Classic. Here are some of the details of this event:
Course: Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, Ghost Creek Golf Course
Location: North Plains, Oregon
Defending Champion: Suzann Pettersen
Winning Score: 69-74-64 = 207 (-6)
Final Field: 144 players
Par: 37/35 = 72
Yardage: 6,611 yards
Purse: $1,500,000
This will be one of the strongest fields of the year. My strength of field rating is 67%. The only non-major with a stronger field was the Evian Masters. Every healthy top player on the LPGA priority list will be in attendance.
Here are the pairings for the first 2 days.
Here are the television times:
Aug 17 - GC 6:30 PM-8:30 PM EST
Aug 18 - GC 6:30 PM-9:30 PM EST
Aug 19 - GC 7:00 PM-9:30 PM EST
Other Tidbits:
Other Tidbits:
After missing her first 9 cuts of the year, Jane Rah finally made the cut. She finished dead last.
Meredith Duncan ended her consecutive missed cut streak at 12; she finished 59th.
Rookies Jacqui Concolino, Sydnee Michaels, and Kathleen Ekey all had their best finishes of the year at the Jamie Farr Toledo Classic.
Tour rookie and current driving distance leader, Maude-Aimee Leblanc, will miss the rest of the season. I am told that she has a "stress fracture in her spine." She is certainly one of the most interesting rookies this year. Hopefully we will get to see those 300 yard drives early next year.
Hard to Believe Fact of the Week:
Inbee Park did not have a top-ten finish in her first 9 starts of the year; she now has six in a row.
Rolex Mover of the Week:
So Yeon Ryu moved from #22 to #12.
Titleholders Update:
Jennie Lee, Jacqui Concolino, and Lindsey Wright are the latest to qualify. Catriona Matthew remains the highest-ranked player on the LPGA priority list not yet in.
I will be flying to Vancouver in a few days for the CN Canadian Open. Will have further updates when I return.
Update: Yani Tseng has fired her caddie again! After firing longtime caddie Jason Hamilton just a few short weeks ago, she has now fired new caddie Basil Van Rooyan. Her newest caddie will be Patrick Turley.
Na Yeon Choi has hired Jason Hamilton.
I will be flying to Vancouver in a few days for the CN Canadian Open. Will have further updates when I return.
Update: Yani Tseng has fired her caddie again! After firing longtime caddie Jason Hamilton just a few short weeks ago, she has now fired new caddie Basil Van Rooyan. Her newest caddie will be Patrick Turley.
Na Yeon Choi has hired Jason Hamilton.
Follow @tonyjesselli Tweet
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The Best on the LPGA: 2-Time Winners, August 2012 Update
With So Yeon Ryu joining the ranks of the LPGA's 2-time winners thanks to her dominating win in Toledo last week, it's time to update my ranking from 2 weeks ago and offer up my latest best guesses as to who's most likely to enter "Club 36" (3-to-6-time winners on tour)!
Most Likely to Win (Again) in 2012
1. So Yeon Ryu: She had great chances to kick off 2012 with a pair of wins, but couldn't convert either time. She's playing really good golf this year (with only 2 finishes outside the top 25) and has given herself other chances to win (with 7 top 5s in 2012), so maybe her 7-shot victory thanks to Sunday's 62 will help put to rest the doubts she's raised during her meteoric career over her ability to close the deal. Given her combination of accuracy and distance off the tee to go with strong putting, I'm thinking my Rookie of the Year pick has a great chance to win just about any week she plays.
2. Inbee Park: She's got a solid combination of distance and accuracy off the tee and can bomb it out there when she wants, but given how great a putter she's been her entire career and how well she's been rolling the ball of late, the stat I'm focusing on is her 67% greens in regulation rate. Just think if her iron play were as solid as her driving--she'd certainly be averaging more than 3.885 birdies per round (which is already 4th on tour, behind only Stacy Lewis, Ya Ni Tseng, and Ryu). In other words, if she improves in just that one area, the rest of the tour had better watch out for her week in and week out!
3. Anna Nordqvist: Hound Dog claims her rookie season in 2009 was the best by anyone in LPGA history who failed to win the Rookie of the Year award and ranks it 8th overall. What really distinguished it from her last 2 seasons was her driving accuracy that year--she declined from hitting about 77% of her fairways as a rookie to under 70% of late. It's a good sign that she's hitting almost 73% of her fairways so far this season, but her stats on the greens show where she needs to improve, with 1.81 PPGIR and only 3.321 birdies per round. The good news is she has been putting better in the summer than earlier in the season, plus she's gotten top 10s in 5 of her last 8 starts. If she continues to heat up on the greens, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see her win before summer is over.
4. Sun Young Yoo: After seeming to plateau last year, something in the California air this year must have agreed with the Class of 2006's top late bloomer. After a not-even-close runner-up finish at the Kia to Ya Ni Tseng, she took advantage of In-Kyung Kim's heartbreaking final-hole miss from about a foot and beat her with a birdie in a playoff at the Kraft Nabisco Championship for the 2nd win and 1st major of her career. A straight shooter in the Cristie Kerr/Angela Stanford/Brittany Lang mold, she's doing everything well this year but getting the ball in the hole--if she can improve her 1.84 putts per green in regulation rate, she'll start averaging even more than 3.308 birdies per round and become a more regular visitor to the top of the leaderboard. Unfortunately, she's gone in the opposite direction since my June ranking with these stats and her finishes have undergone a similar decline--she's gone from being a regular in the top 20 to falling outside the top 30 her last 2 starts. Still she's been playing better than almost everyone else on this list for most of the season, so I don't see any reason to put her lower in my ranking than this.
The Contenders
5. Meena Lee: She's been driving for show this year on the LPGA, hitting 76% of her fairways, but she couldn't capitalize on her exceptional play in Hawaii, her top 20 at Evian was her 1st since late April in Alabama, and she missed the cut last week in Toledo. Clearly, her putter has cooled off this summer, but with only a 67% greens in regulation rate and declining driving accuracy since my early-June ranking, I'm guessing that she's off in every area of her game.
6. Momoko Ueda: Her T12 at Evian was her 3rd top 20 of 2012 on the LPGA, she continues to drive the ball well, and she's hitting her irons more solidly (moving her greens in regulation rate up from 62% in early June to 66% now) of late, but her putting stats have declined during the same span (from averaging 1.79 PPGIR and 3.33 birdies per round to 1.84 and 3.20). The few times I followed her in Waterloo, I certainly saw her miss her share of makeable birdie chances. So if she can get the ball in the hole just a little faster, I'm thinking we should start seeing her contend more often on the LPGA. I'm hoping she's going to emphasize the LPGA more in the 2nd half of 2012 than she has in her previous 4 seasons as a dual LPGA-JLPGA major. I'm getting the feeling she's very close to putting it all together outside Japan for the 1st time in her career.
7. Morgan Pressel: Until the Sybase, she was on the upswing from a very flat start to 2012 and a huge falloff from her 2011 season, when she was regularly making top 20s and top 10s and had 2 top 3s in majors. Her driving had been the culprit, as one of the most accurate players on tour in a typical year was hitting the fairway off the tee only 65% of the time early in the season. Although she improved it to 71% for my June ranking, it's since fallen to 68%, most likely due to a combination of emotional scars (from her semi-final match slow play penalty at the Sybase Match Play Championship) and physical ailments (stemming from her practice routine and the rough at the Wegmans LPGA Championship). More ominously, she has 2 WDs and 2 missed cuts in her last 4 starts and her greens in regulation rate has dropped to a troubling 61%. I was surprised when I talked with her in Pittsford and in Waterloo in June how low her confidence level was; in retrospect, I can understand why. I'd love to see her turn her season around.
Quantum Leap Candidates
8. Eun-Hee Ji: In my June ranking, I concluded, "She could be a real surprise at the Wegmans LPGA Championship." And she was, getting into the final pairing for the final round and finishing T2. Since then, though, she's fallen off a cliff, missing 4 cuts in a row. Even though her putts per green in regulation rate isn't bad at all, she's averaging just under 2.90 birdies per round, which is way below what you need to be doing if you want to be an elite player on the LPGA. Given that her greens in regulation rate has fallen below 70%, I'm guessing it's a combination of her iron play and putting that's been holding her back lately.
9. Katherine Hull: For someone who plays most of the winter at home in Australia, she had a very slow start to the LPGA's 2012 season, with a lone top 20 at the KNC to give some hope, and even after glimmers of brilliance in NJ (with a top 10 at the Sybase when she made the sweet 16 and a runner-up at the ShopRite), she hasn't been able to crack the top 25 ever since. All her key performance stats are just below elite levels, although her 3.19 birdies per round rate isn't half bad given her relative struggles in her other areas.
10. Jimin Kang: She got a T5 early in the season but hasn't done much of anything since she had to withdraw from the Kia Classic. Still, she managed a T21 at the U.S. Women's Open and has a history of pulling solid and even spectacular results seemingly out of nowhere (as evidenced by her top-3 finish in Korea late last season), so let's not be counting her out just yet. Given how blah the rest of her performance stats are looking right now, her averaging over 3.05 birdies per round is pretty amazing, which suggests to me she knows how to take advantage of a hot putter. Only question is whether and when it will get hot in the 2nd half of the season.
11. Michelle Wie: OK, her 1st half of 2012 was pretty nightmarish. It's gotten to the point where I'm just happy to see her playing on the weekend, no matter how early her starting times are. Feel free to throw rotten fruits and vegetables at me in comments for putting her odds of winning over the course of the season higher than the rest of the 2-time winners!
12. Jeong Jang: It's definitely going to take her awhile to get back in the swing of things, now that she's back from maternity leave after taking all of 2011 off. Let's see if infant Seul Samantha allows her mama enough practice time to return to the form that put her regularly in contention before wrist injuries derailed her career. I got to follow both of them for awhile at the Wegmans LPGA Championship, which turned out to be her best finish in the 1st half of the season, a T15. But she's gotta improve on her dismal greens in regulation rate (59%) to have more weeks like that one in the 2nd half of the season. Her T15 at the Farr, her 3rd top 20 of the year, is definitely a step in the right direction.
13. Jennifer Rosales: She was a top-30 caliber player from 2002-2005, when she notched her 2 wins and 17 of her 20 top 10s, but she hasn't broken into the top 10 since then. Between injuries and bad golf, she's been missing more cuts than she's made, yet still hanging onto her card. The good news is, she got her 2nd top 20 of the season at the Walmart. The bad news is, her key ball-striking and putting stats have gone downhill since my June ranking, she didn't make it into either the USWO or the Evian fields, and she missed the cut in Toledo (making so few birdies that her birdies per round rate dropped from just over 3.30 to 2.70). A lot's going to ride on how well she plays in her remaining starts. Let's see how she handles the pressure.
On the Bottom, Looking Up
14. Karen Stupples: She hasn't really done anything special this season on the LPGA since getting a top 10 at the Lotte in mid-April and she's riding a 3-event missed-cut streak, but she did improve on her opening score at the Evian by 12 shots on Friday and broke 70 for the 6th time this season and 1st time since the 2nd round at the Manulife in late June, so maybe there's reason for optimism in the run-up to the Women's British Open for this veteran and mother of 2.
15. Ji Young Oh: It's looking more and more like my doubts in February 2010--"Somehow I can't believe that this Junior Mint has as promising a future on the LPGA as the other Young Guns on this list...."--were right on target. She had a disastrous 2011 and even though she's straightened out her driver in 2012 and is starting to make cuts again, almost nothing else in her game is very dependable right now. She hasn't made a top 40 all year and is coming off a T50 in Toledo, so it's hard to say things are looking up for the 2nd half of her season.
16. Laura Diaz: She'd been a regular in the top 40 and on the Solheim Cup since 2000, and even had 2 consecutive top-10 seasons early last decade, but coming back from the birth of her daughter a couple of years ago has proven quite difficult. From 2009 to 2011, she found every aspect of the game difficult and is now hanging onto her card by the tips of her fingers, at #132 on the Priority Status List thanks to a 1-time career top 40 exemption. About the only good thing you can say about her 2012 is that she's made the cut in 3 of her last 5 starts.
17. Janice Moodie: This 3-time Solheim Cupper has never lost her LPGA tour card, even when she gave birth in 2006 and played only 10 events. But she hasn't won since 2002 and has gotten only 5 of her 44 career top 10s in the last 6 seasons, so it's not like being a mom on tour hasn't taken its toll on her game. With a kindergartner and an infant, both boys, to corral, it's no wonder her putter has been suffering this season. What is surprising is that she hadn't made a cut all year since finishing near the bottom of the pack in Australia to kick off the season--until last week in Toledo, where she finished T25. Maybe it's a sign of better things to come.
18. Christina Kim: A 67 on Friday at Evian broke her 4-event missed-cut streak, but even though she continues to get the ball in the fairway with great regularity (although she did drop from 78% in early June to 76% now), she's still lost a lot of distance, and her iron play and putting continue to let her down in a big way, so it's way too soon to say she's seeing any light in the tunnel during the worst slump of her career. Regular readers of her blog know that she's been facing down much more than a terrible slump, though, including a serious back injury, depression, and thoughts of suicide the last 2 years. Here's hoping she can rediscover the fun in the game in the 2nd half of the season and use it to keep those negative thoughts in perspective on and off the course.
19. Stacy Prammanasudh: She, too, is stuck in the worst slump of her career, having made 1 cut in 8 starts so far this season (and missed her last 5 in a row), but maybe baby Ryp Walker will start giving her more practice time soon!
On the Outside, Looking In
20. Carin Koch: She notched 56 LPGA top 10s between 1995 and 2008, but only 2 wins--and at the Corning Classic and in Mexico (2 warning signs from my 1-time winners' ranking). But she moved back to Sweden in 2009 and has played only the 2 dual LPGA-LET events per season ever since. Don't get me wrong--she's often played well on the LET and is currently #23 on their money list--but she's just not giving herself many chances to add to her LPGA win total.
21. Gloria Park: She's still playing full-time at home in Korea.
Most Likely to Win (Again) in 2012
1. So Yeon Ryu: She had great chances to kick off 2012 with a pair of wins, but couldn't convert either time. She's playing really good golf this year (with only 2 finishes outside the top 25) and has given herself other chances to win (with 7 top 5s in 2012), so maybe her 7-shot victory thanks to Sunday's 62 will help put to rest the doubts she's raised during her meteoric career over her ability to close the deal. Given her combination of accuracy and distance off the tee to go with strong putting, I'm thinking my Rookie of the Year pick has a great chance to win just about any week she plays.
2. Inbee Park: She's got a solid combination of distance and accuracy off the tee and can bomb it out there when she wants, but given how great a putter she's been her entire career and how well she's been rolling the ball of late, the stat I'm focusing on is her 67% greens in regulation rate. Just think if her iron play were as solid as her driving--she'd certainly be averaging more than 3.885 birdies per round (which is already 4th on tour, behind only Stacy Lewis, Ya Ni Tseng, and Ryu). In other words, if she improves in just that one area, the rest of the tour had better watch out for her week in and week out!
3. Anna Nordqvist: Hound Dog claims her rookie season in 2009 was the best by anyone in LPGA history who failed to win the Rookie of the Year award and ranks it 8th overall. What really distinguished it from her last 2 seasons was her driving accuracy that year--she declined from hitting about 77% of her fairways as a rookie to under 70% of late. It's a good sign that she's hitting almost 73% of her fairways so far this season, but her stats on the greens show where she needs to improve, with 1.81 PPGIR and only 3.321 birdies per round. The good news is she has been putting better in the summer than earlier in the season, plus she's gotten top 10s in 5 of her last 8 starts. If she continues to heat up on the greens, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see her win before summer is over.
4. Sun Young Yoo: After seeming to plateau last year, something in the California air this year must have agreed with the Class of 2006's top late bloomer. After a not-even-close runner-up finish at the Kia to Ya Ni Tseng, she took advantage of In-Kyung Kim's heartbreaking final-hole miss from about a foot and beat her with a birdie in a playoff at the Kraft Nabisco Championship for the 2nd win and 1st major of her career. A straight shooter in the Cristie Kerr/Angela Stanford/Brittany Lang mold, she's doing everything well this year but getting the ball in the hole--if she can improve her 1.84 putts per green in regulation rate, she'll start averaging even more than 3.308 birdies per round and become a more regular visitor to the top of the leaderboard. Unfortunately, she's gone in the opposite direction since my June ranking with these stats and her finishes have undergone a similar decline--she's gone from being a regular in the top 20 to falling outside the top 30 her last 2 starts. Still she's been playing better than almost everyone else on this list for most of the season, so I don't see any reason to put her lower in my ranking than this.
The Contenders
5. Meena Lee: She's been driving for show this year on the LPGA, hitting 76% of her fairways, but she couldn't capitalize on her exceptional play in Hawaii, her top 20 at Evian was her 1st since late April in Alabama, and she missed the cut last week in Toledo. Clearly, her putter has cooled off this summer, but with only a 67% greens in regulation rate and declining driving accuracy since my early-June ranking, I'm guessing that she's off in every area of her game.
6. Momoko Ueda: Her T12 at Evian was her 3rd top 20 of 2012 on the LPGA, she continues to drive the ball well, and she's hitting her irons more solidly (moving her greens in regulation rate up from 62% in early June to 66% now) of late, but her putting stats have declined during the same span (from averaging 1.79 PPGIR and 3.33 birdies per round to 1.84 and 3.20). The few times I followed her in Waterloo, I certainly saw her miss her share of makeable birdie chances. So if she can get the ball in the hole just a little faster, I'm thinking we should start seeing her contend more often on the LPGA. I'm hoping she's going to emphasize the LPGA more in the 2nd half of 2012 than she has in her previous 4 seasons as a dual LPGA-JLPGA major. I'm getting the feeling she's very close to putting it all together outside Japan for the 1st time in her career.
7. Morgan Pressel: Until the Sybase, she was on the upswing from a very flat start to 2012 and a huge falloff from her 2011 season, when she was regularly making top 20s and top 10s and had 2 top 3s in majors. Her driving had been the culprit, as one of the most accurate players on tour in a typical year was hitting the fairway off the tee only 65% of the time early in the season. Although she improved it to 71% for my June ranking, it's since fallen to 68%, most likely due to a combination of emotional scars (from her semi-final match slow play penalty at the Sybase Match Play Championship) and physical ailments (stemming from her practice routine and the rough at the Wegmans LPGA Championship). More ominously, she has 2 WDs and 2 missed cuts in her last 4 starts and her greens in regulation rate has dropped to a troubling 61%. I was surprised when I talked with her in Pittsford and in Waterloo in June how low her confidence level was; in retrospect, I can understand why. I'd love to see her turn her season around.
Quantum Leap Candidates
8. Eun-Hee Ji: In my June ranking, I concluded, "She could be a real surprise at the Wegmans LPGA Championship." And she was, getting into the final pairing for the final round and finishing T2. Since then, though, she's fallen off a cliff, missing 4 cuts in a row. Even though her putts per green in regulation rate isn't bad at all, she's averaging just under 2.90 birdies per round, which is way below what you need to be doing if you want to be an elite player on the LPGA. Given that her greens in regulation rate has fallen below 70%, I'm guessing it's a combination of her iron play and putting that's been holding her back lately.
9. Katherine Hull: For someone who plays most of the winter at home in Australia, she had a very slow start to the LPGA's 2012 season, with a lone top 20 at the KNC to give some hope, and even after glimmers of brilliance in NJ (with a top 10 at the Sybase when she made the sweet 16 and a runner-up at the ShopRite), she hasn't been able to crack the top 25 ever since. All her key performance stats are just below elite levels, although her 3.19 birdies per round rate isn't half bad given her relative struggles in her other areas.
10. Jimin Kang: She got a T5 early in the season but hasn't done much of anything since she had to withdraw from the Kia Classic. Still, she managed a T21 at the U.S. Women's Open and has a history of pulling solid and even spectacular results seemingly out of nowhere (as evidenced by her top-3 finish in Korea late last season), so let's not be counting her out just yet. Given how blah the rest of her performance stats are looking right now, her averaging over 3.05 birdies per round is pretty amazing, which suggests to me she knows how to take advantage of a hot putter. Only question is whether and when it will get hot in the 2nd half of the season.
11. Michelle Wie: OK, her 1st half of 2012 was pretty nightmarish. It's gotten to the point where I'm just happy to see her playing on the weekend, no matter how early her starting times are. Feel free to throw rotten fruits and vegetables at me in comments for putting her odds of winning over the course of the season higher than the rest of the 2-time winners!
12. Jeong Jang: It's definitely going to take her awhile to get back in the swing of things, now that she's back from maternity leave after taking all of 2011 off. Let's see if infant Seul Samantha allows her mama enough practice time to return to the form that put her regularly in contention before wrist injuries derailed her career. I got to follow both of them for awhile at the Wegmans LPGA Championship, which turned out to be her best finish in the 1st half of the season, a T15. But she's gotta improve on her dismal greens in regulation rate (59%) to have more weeks like that one in the 2nd half of the season. Her T15 at the Farr, her 3rd top 20 of the year, is definitely a step in the right direction.
13. Jennifer Rosales: She was a top-30 caliber player from 2002-2005, when she notched her 2 wins and 17 of her 20 top 10s, but she hasn't broken into the top 10 since then. Between injuries and bad golf, she's been missing more cuts than she's made, yet still hanging onto her card. The good news is, she got her 2nd top 20 of the season at the Walmart. The bad news is, her key ball-striking and putting stats have gone downhill since my June ranking, she didn't make it into either the USWO or the Evian fields, and she missed the cut in Toledo (making so few birdies that her birdies per round rate dropped from just over 3.30 to 2.70). A lot's going to ride on how well she plays in her remaining starts. Let's see how she handles the pressure.
On the Bottom, Looking Up
14. Karen Stupples: She hasn't really done anything special this season on the LPGA since getting a top 10 at the Lotte in mid-April and she's riding a 3-event missed-cut streak, but she did improve on her opening score at the Evian by 12 shots on Friday and broke 70 for the 6th time this season and 1st time since the 2nd round at the Manulife in late June, so maybe there's reason for optimism in the run-up to the Women's British Open for this veteran and mother of 2.
15. Ji Young Oh: It's looking more and more like my doubts in February 2010--"Somehow I can't believe that this Junior Mint has as promising a future on the LPGA as the other Young Guns on this list...."--were right on target. She had a disastrous 2011 and even though she's straightened out her driver in 2012 and is starting to make cuts again, almost nothing else in her game is very dependable right now. She hasn't made a top 40 all year and is coming off a T50 in Toledo, so it's hard to say things are looking up for the 2nd half of her season.
16. Laura Diaz: She'd been a regular in the top 40 and on the Solheim Cup since 2000, and even had 2 consecutive top-10 seasons early last decade, but coming back from the birth of her daughter a couple of years ago has proven quite difficult. From 2009 to 2011, she found every aspect of the game difficult and is now hanging onto her card by the tips of her fingers, at #132 on the Priority Status List thanks to a 1-time career top 40 exemption. About the only good thing you can say about her 2012 is that she's made the cut in 3 of her last 5 starts.
17. Janice Moodie: This 3-time Solheim Cupper has never lost her LPGA tour card, even when she gave birth in 2006 and played only 10 events. But she hasn't won since 2002 and has gotten only 5 of her 44 career top 10s in the last 6 seasons, so it's not like being a mom on tour hasn't taken its toll on her game. With a kindergartner and an infant, both boys, to corral, it's no wonder her putter has been suffering this season. What is surprising is that she hadn't made a cut all year since finishing near the bottom of the pack in Australia to kick off the season--until last week in Toledo, where she finished T25. Maybe it's a sign of better things to come.
18. Christina Kim: A 67 on Friday at Evian broke her 4-event missed-cut streak, but even though she continues to get the ball in the fairway with great regularity (although she did drop from 78% in early June to 76% now), she's still lost a lot of distance, and her iron play and putting continue to let her down in a big way, so it's way too soon to say she's seeing any light in the tunnel during the worst slump of her career. Regular readers of her blog know that she's been facing down much more than a terrible slump, though, including a serious back injury, depression, and thoughts of suicide the last 2 years. Here's hoping she can rediscover the fun in the game in the 2nd half of the season and use it to keep those negative thoughts in perspective on and off the course.
19. Stacy Prammanasudh: She, too, is stuck in the worst slump of her career, having made 1 cut in 8 starts so far this season (and missed her last 5 in a row), but maybe baby Ryp Walker will start giving her more practice time soon!
On the Outside, Looking In
20. Carin Koch: She notched 56 LPGA top 10s between 1995 and 2008, but only 2 wins--and at the Corning Classic and in Mexico (2 warning signs from my 1-time winners' ranking). But she moved back to Sweden in 2009 and has played only the 2 dual LPGA-LET events per season ever since. Don't get me wrong--she's often played well on the LET and is currently #23 on their money list--but she's just not giving herself many chances to add to her LPGA win total.
21. Gloria Park: She's still playing full-time at home in Korea.
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