What If the KLPGA and JLPGA Were Allowed to Field Teams for the Solheim Cup?

I don't think anyone needed to know that there are only 6 Americans and 3 Europeans in the top 25 of my ranking of the best careers from among those in the LPGA rookie classes of 2005 through 2013 to convince them that the Solheim Cup won't be featuring close to all the world's best female golfers.  After all, we knew over a decades ago that the likes of Karrie Webb, Se Ri Pak, and Grace Park were unable to play in the Solheim Cup when they were regularly duelling with Annika Sorenstam to be the best player in the world of women's golf.

But maybe we can use my ranking in conjunction with the better-known ones out there to play a little game of "what if?"  Today, there are only 5 Americans and 5 Europeans in the top 25 of the current Rolex Rankings, which weights performances on 6 professional tours over the past 2 calendar years, and in the current Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index, which uses a different method of comparing golfers on 4 tours over the past calendar year.  Let's take a look at the actual teams first.  Generally speaking, if someone is playing the best golf of their career this year, they should be highest-ranked in the GSPI, followed by the RR, and then by the MH.  If they're playing better this year than last but still worse than their career norms, then their GSPI ranking would be higher than their RR ranking but lower than their MH ranking.  If their rookie years were before 2005 or they were never LPGA members, they don't appear in my ranking, so you'll just have to rely on the relation between the GSPI and RR and their most recent performances instead.  I'm listing the players from hottest to coldest, in my judgment, on Team USA and Team Euro.

Team USA [Captain: Meg Mallon]
Stacy Lewis (#3 GSPI, #2 RR, #6 MH)
Paula Creamer (#6 GSPI, #11 RR, #4 MH)
Angela Stanford (#20 GSPI, #16 RR,  n.r. MH)
Lizette Salas (#15 GSPI, #19 RR, #29 MH)
Jessica Korda (#26 GSPI, #28 RR, #31 MH)
Cristie Kerr (#12 GSPI, #12 RR, n.r. MH)
Morgan Pressel (#122 GSPI, #41 RR, #12 MH)
Gerina Piller (#34 GSPI, #57 RR, #47 MH)
Lexi Thompson ( #35 GSPI, #26 RR, #21 MH)
Brittany Lang (#69 GSPI, #50 RR, #27 MH)
Michelle Wie (#109 GSPI, #82 RR, #13 MH)
Brittany Lincicome (#76 GSPI, #38 RR, #10 MH)

I modified the results you'd get from rankings alone by taking into account that Lewis is coming off a win and 3 other top 7s in her last 5 starts, Stanford snapped a 3-event top-5 run with a jet-lag-induced T17 at the WBO, Creamer has finished T13 or better in 7 of her last 9 starts, and Pressel has 6 top-26 finishes in her last 8 starts, including 2 top 5s.

Team Euro [Captain: Liselotte Neumann]
Suzann Pettersen (#9 GSPI, #3 RR, n.r. MH)
Catriona Matthew (#14 GSPI, #8 RR, n.r. MH)
Beatriz Recari (#16 GSPI, #20 RR, #22 MH)
Anna Nordqvist (#18 GSPI, #22 RR, #11 MH)
Karine Icher (#17 GSPI, #24 RR, n.r. MH)
Charley Hull (#77 GSPI, #147 RR, n.r. MH)
Carlota Ciganda (#57 GSPI, #30 RR, #28 MH)
Jodi Ewart Shadoff (#63 GSPI, #45 RR, #39 MH)
Caroline Hedwall ( #30 GSPI, #29 RR, #35 MH)
Azahara Munoz (#36 GSPI, #26 RR, #20 MH)
Guilia Sergas (#92 GSPI, #62 RR, n.r. MH)
Caroline Masson (#147 GSPI, #58 RR, n.r. MH)

I'd say it's a toss-up between the 2 teams, with maybe a slight advantage to Team USA based on recent play and home-country advantage.  But how do you think they would stack up against the following hypothetical teams?

Seoul Sisters [Captain: Se Ri Pak]
Inbee Park (#1 GSPI, #1 RR,  #5 MH)
Na Yeon Choi (#4 GSPI, #4 RR, #3 MH)
So Yeon Ryu ( #5 GSPI, #5 RR, #7 MH)
In-Kyung Kim (#10 GSPI, #9 RR, #9 MH)
Ji-Yai Shin (#11 GSPI, #10 RR, #2 MH)
Hee Young Park (#28 GSPI, #15 RR, #18 MH)
Amy Yang (#22 GSPI, #23 RR, #23 MH)
Mi-Jeong Jeon (#23 GSPI, #25 RR, n.r. MH)
Sun-Ju Ahn (#19 GSPI, #34 RR, n.r. MH)
Hyo-Joo Kim (n.r. GSPI, #32 RR, n.r. MH)
Sun Young Yoo (#43 GSPI, #33 RR, #25 MH)
Ha-Na Jang (n.r. GSPI, #43 RR, n.r. MH)

Assuming 8 picks go to the LPGA and 2 each to the KLPGA and JLPGA, that's the team I'd put together.  But even if some from among the LPGA's Chella Choi, Haeji Kang, Ilhee Lee, and Hee Kyung Seo, the KLPGA's Ha Neul Kim and Soo-Jin Yang, and the JLPGA's Bo-Mee Lee get shuffled in for whatever reason (maybe Pak would want to go with a 7 LPGA/3 KLPGA/2 JLPGA mix?), anybody picked would still be inside the top 50 of the Rolex Rankings!  So obviously the Seoul Sisters are the strongest team on paper, although they might not have dominated as much as expected if Shin, Yang, Jeon, Ahn, and Yoo wouldn't have played better than they have been lately.

Now, how about the team from Japan?

Nadeshiko Japan II [Captain: Yuri Fudoh]
Ai Miyazato (#21 GSPI, #13 RR, #8 MH)
Rikako Morita (#27 GSPI, #33 RR, n.r. MH)
Miki Saiki (#32 GSPI, #37 RR, n.r. MH)
Mika Miyazato (#25 GSPI, #17 RR, #14 MH)
Chie Arimura (#44 GSPI, #36 RR, #34 MH)
Mamiko Higa ( #119 GSPI, #44 RR, n.r. MH)
Yumiko Yoshida (#52 GSPI, #66 RR, n.r. MH)
Natsuka Hori (#104 GSPI, #65 RR, n.r. MH)
Sakura Yokomine (#29 GSPI, #51 RR, n.r. MH)
Ayako Uehara (#59 GSPI, #83 RR, #44 MH)
Ritsuko Ryu (#73 GSPI, #69 RR, n.r. MH)
Momoko Ueda (#110 GSPI, #118 RR, #33 MH)

I'm assuming here that Ueda would make the team on a similar rationale as Wie made Team USA, but Shiho Oyama, Hiromi Mogi, Junko Omote, and Yukari Baba are playing better than her right now among the JLPGA's veterans and there are plenty of youngsters, including Kumiko Kaneda, Mayu Hattori, Yuki Ichinose, Maiko Wakabayashi, Asako Fujimoto, Kaori Ohe, Erika Kikuchi, and Harukyo Nomura, who could also take her place--and maybe even Uehara's.  On paper, then, Nadeshiko Japan II would be the weakest team--and momentum would not be on their side, as their biggest names are not playing the same world-class golf as the top players on the other teams right now.

Given that imbalance, I can see a case being made for turning the Seoul Sisters into Team Asia (bringing in Shanshan Feng--and, in the future, assuming she recovers well from shoulder surgery, Ariya Jutanugarn) and turning Nadeshiko Japan II into Team Pacific (bringing in Karrie Webb and Ya Ni Tseng, and giving Candie Kung, Lindsey Wright, Mariajo Uribe, Katherine Hull-Kirk, and Teresa Lu fighting chances to make the team--and, in the future, Lydia Ko).  But I'm not sure trying to dilute Korea-Japan nationalistic tensions by bringing in a China-Taiwan edge to the matches wouldn't actually play worse politically.  And picking captains and teams for both these golfing confederations would certainly be complicated by nationalism that seems somewhat more intense than what must be going on behind closed doors in the LET.  (At least they already have an EU, right?)  I suppose you could keep Japan and Korea as they are and let the ALPG and LAGT create 12-player teams of their own, but they'd clearly be the weakest of the bunch and China would eventually want to break away from the LAGT and create their own team, leaving the rest of Asia in the cold.  Hence, I can't see a viable short-term alternative to teams from the top 2 tours and countries in the world of women's golf who are excluded from the Solheim Cup being drawn into it.  In short, I still like my idea of turning the Solheim Cup into a 4-way match, in even-numbered years having the top-ranked team play the bottom-ranked team and in odd-numbered years having the winners face off and the losers face off (which would establish who plays whom in the next even-numbered year).  It's too late this year, but in 2014 it could be Seoul Sisters vs. Nadeshiko Japan II and Team USA vs. Team Euro!

Well, it could if the LPGA hadn't created the biennial International Crown, which relies on the Rolex Rankings to select 8 4-player national teams for match-play extravaganzas that are guaranteed to take place in 2014 and 2016.  (Click here to download the details--this season determines which countries will compete in its premiere in 2014!)  If it takes off, I don't see where there's room on the schedule to expand the Solheim Cup (as I'm suggesting) or clone it (as Brent Kelley suggested a while ago when he basically called for the Lexus Cup to be revived), much less create a World Cup-style event that feeds into the Olympics, as I proposed in 2009.  I wouldn't mind, because fielding a 4-person team is a much lower barrier to entry for established golfing powers like Sweden, Australia, and England and newer ones like Spain and Thailand.  The top 4 players in most of the top countries are pretty evenly matched and the format is awesome.  So I'm hoping it will take off.

If I had to bet, I'd say that for the rest of this decade we'll see the Solheim Cup joined by the International Crown and the Olympics.  And that's a huge step forward from where we are now.  Not to take anything away from the Solheim Cup, which is a great competition and will only get better as Europe's young stars mature, but professional women's golf has been planetary for decades and it's long past time we have team events that showcase everyone's excellence.

[Update 1 (2:24 am):  Almost done doing laundry and imagine my surprise that Karen Krouse agrees with me that the Solheim Cup needs to enter the 21st century!]

LPGA Milestones: Stacy Lewis Breaks $1M Barrier in 2013; Morgan Pressel Passes $5M in Career

Great performances at the Ricoh Women's British Open helped 2 great American golfers pass major milestones in their careers.  Stacy Lewis's win boosted her past the $1M mark in season winnings and Morgan Pressel's T4 finish allowed her to break the $5M barrier in career winnings.  Lewis is the 2nd player this season, after Inbee Park, to require 7 digits to count her winnings.  She's gotta keep winning if she wants to make the money title race and the Player of the Year race at all interesting.

Suzann Pettersen and In-Kyung Kim are racing to be the next to join the 7-digit club in 2013, although So Yeon Ryu has an outside chance of leapfrogging them.

You can track the career money list races for (most of the) top players from the LPGA rookie classes of 2005 through 2013 on my spreadsheet.  In a nutshell, Na Yeon Choi is closing on Ya Ni Tseng in the race to break the $10M barrier, although Tseng's lead on her '08 classmate is still huge; Ai Miyazato and Inbee Park are racing for the $8M mark; In-Kyung Kim and Ji-Yai Shin have a long way to go to get to $7M; Lewis has the advantage on Pressel and Brittany Lincicome when it comes to reaching the $6M milestone; and nobody else is close to $5M, although many are closing on Seon Hwa Lee, who's been stalled around $4M for years, and Meena Lee is the 1st to pass her.

Top Careers Among the LPGA Rookie Classes of 2005 through 2013, August 2013 Edition

After Stacy Lewis's decisive win at the Ricoh Women's British Open and the mini-controversy over Team USA's captain's picks for the Solheim Cup, I decided to update and expand the spreadsheet I use to rank the top golfers who are active members of the LPGA's rookie classes of 2005 through 2013.  The number in parentheses represents the points each player has earned in my system over the course of her career.

I explain the system in my "Best of the Tseng Dynasty" post, but in a nutshell each major is worth 100 points, each win is worth 40 points, each percentage point in winning rate is worth 32 points, each in top-3 rate is worth 16, each in top-10 rate is worth 8, each in top-20 rate is worth 4, and each in finish rate (no MC, DQ, or WD) is worth 1, while each $100 of winnings per start and finish is worth 1 point, as well.

Simply the Best

1. Ya Ni Tseng (4004)

The Contenders

2. Ji-Yai Shin (3499)

3. Na Yeon Choi (2906)

4. Paula Creamer (2744)

5. Inbee Park (2735)

6. Stacy Lewis (2617)

7. So Yeon Ryu (2530)

The Next Best

8. Ai Miyazato (2269)

9. In-Kyung Kim (1785)

Quantum Leap Candidates

10. Brittany Lincicome (1479)
11. Anna Nordqvist (1473)

12. Morgan Pressel (1384)

13. Michelle Wie (1372)

14. Mika Miyazato (1269)

15. Song-Hee Kim (1241)

16. Seon Hwa Lee (1233)

17. Hee Kyung Seo (1222)

18. Hee Young Park (1218)

19. Shanshan Feng (1202)

20. Azahara Munoz (1167)

21. Lexi Thompson (1161)

22. Beatriz Recari (1139)

23. Amy Yang (1099)

24. Eun-Hee Ji (1056)

25. Sun Young Yoo (1054)

26. Jee Young Lee (1039)

The Best of the Rest

27. Brittany Lang (958)

28. Carlota Ciganda (934)

29. Lizette Salas (901)
30. Meena Lee (876)

31. Jessica Korda (871)

32. Julieta Granada (776)

33. Momoko Ueda (775)

34. Chie Arimura (768)

35. Caroline Hedwall (740)

36. Sandra Gal (688)

37. Jenny Shin (684)

38. Chella Choi (683)

39. Jodi Ewart Shadoff (658)

40. Ilhee Lee (650)

41. Jennifer Johnson (648)

42. Ji Young Oh (621)

43. Kristy McPherson (618)

44. Ayako Uehara (610)

45. Mi Jung Hur (595)

46. Moriya Jutanugarn (584)

47. Gerina Piller (573)

48. Haeji Kang (556)

49. Vicky Hurst (534)

50. Pornanong Phatlum (481)

51. Jane Park (475)

52. Meaghan Francella (451)

53. Mina Harigae (398)

54. Katie Futcher (387)

55. Karin Sjodin (342)

I haven't yet ranked the rookie classes of 2011-2013, so I may have missed some candidates for the last category.  I also haven't gotten around to tallying totals for Paula Creamer's top classmates, Brittany Lincicome and Meena Lee, but it's highly likely they'll appear on this list when I do.

Obviously, in a system that values majors and wins quite a bit, it's going to be hard for younger players to move up it quickly.  On the other hand, if they haven't yet suffered through a slump, it can actually make it easier for them to climb to a certain point than players with longer careers.  I haven't actually checked to see if total purses between 2005 and 2013 have stayed in a limited and comparable range, but I'm assuming they have.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For all its problems, my system serves to demonstrate how much better a start to her LPGA career a young phenom is having compared to others merely having good starts, as evidenced by the gap between '12ers So Yeon Ryu and Lexi Thompson in this system, or between Ji Yai Shin and Stacy Lewis and Anna Nordqvist from the Class of 2009.  There's certainly room for arguing about who deserves to be ranked higher than whom when the points gap between them is small, but as a rough estimate, I think it's a pretty decent tool.

Meg Mallon Picks Gerina Piller and Michelle Wie for Solheim Cup

Jennifer Johnson accidentally-on-purpose spilled the beans on twitter that she wasn't getting a captain's pick for Team USA, so it wasn't much of a surprise that Meg Mallon chose Gerina Piller and Michelle Wie.

Johnson had a win, 2 top 10s, and 4 top 20s in her last 9 starts, but she also missed the cut 4 times.

Piller had 1 top 5, 3 top 10s and top 20s in her last 9 starts, with only 2 MCs.

Wie had 2 top 10s and 3 top 20s in her last 9 starts, with 3 MCs and a WD.

So Mallon must have wanted the distance that Piller and Wie bring to Team USA.  It's hard to argue against Johnson's ball-striking, however, with a 75% fairways rate and 74% greens in regulation rate before the WBO.  Even if her putting is a little suspect, I think you could have counted on her to play more solidly than Wie, who's dialing it back this year and still hitting only 57% of her fairways--and JJ's probably a significantly better putter than Piller, as well.  Surprisingly to some, Wie had a good putts per green in regulation rate heading into the WBO; at 1.791 PPGIR, she was ranked 25th on tour.

If it were up to me, I would have gone with Johnson and Piller.  How about you?

[Update 1 (3:59 pm):  Here's Brent Kelley's overview.  Only thing I'd add is surprise that Nocera wasn't picked over Sergas or Ewart Shadoff.  Guess Neumann wanted a team that was used to competing against LPGAers and went with the headline-grabbing teenager (Hull) over the proven veteran who played excellent golf for Team Euro in 2009.]

[Update 2 (4:46 pm):  Interesting how times and attitudes change.  Dottie Pepper questioned the wisdom of Greg Norman's pick of Adam Scott for the 2009 President's Cup.  4 years later she's part of an analogous decision.  Hope it works out for Wie as well in the next 4 years as it has for Scott.]

[Update 3 (5:28 pm):  I'd love to say I called the Wie pick back in April, but in July I wished I had made my call on April Fool's Day!  Today, I don't doubt Wie deserved consideration, but would have made a different call myself.]

Congratulations to Stacy Lewis!

With world #1 Inbee Park's quest to win her 4th consecutive major over in the early afternoon at St. Andrews, what emerged on the final 9 of the Ricoh Women's British Open was a duel between the remaining top-ranked players in the world, Stacy Lewis, Suzann Pettersen, and Na Yeon Choi, with Morgan Pressel and Hee Young Park attempting to crash the party.

The players were tightly bunched as they made the turn, with Choi taking the lead at -9 when she birdied the 10th.  Because most golfers were playing 36 holes after yesterday's wind suspension, the LGU couldn't shuffle the pairings between the 3rd and 4th rounds, so Lewis and Park were 4 groups ahead of Pressel and Pettersen and 5 ahead of Choi's group.  When Choi birdied 10, therefore, she moved to 3 shots ahead of Lewis (who had bogeyed 11 and 12), Park (who had bogeyed 12 and 13), Pressel (who doubled the short 12th by 3-putting from about 5 feet), and Pettersen (who couldn't buy a birdie as she made the turn and bogeyed the 11th).  The only hope for Choi's challengers was that NYC had stumbled home earlier in the day with 4 bogeys in her last 7 holes of her 3rd round.  And recent history started to repeat itself, when she 3-putted from super-long range on the tough 13th and sprayed an attempt to reach the par-5 14th in 2 way right and not only failed to birdie it but 3-putted again from long range after her approach from heavy grass skidded to the way back of the green.  Even so, she was still looking pretty good as Pettersen and Pressel continued to miss putts for birdie and par, while Park was fortunate to come away with a bogey on the 1th after taking 2 shots to get out of the Hell Bunker and could only get to -6 with her great birdie on 16.

But then Lewis took over the tournament.  Despite throwing away her birdie on the 14th with a bogey on 15 to return to -6, she hit a fantastic drive on the Road Hole and an even better approach shot to within about 4 feet.  When she made the birdie putt, she put a lot of pressure on everyone else.  And when she hit a great drive on 18 and recovered from a too-aggressive Texas wedge with a confident 20-footer for birdie, she forced them to come and get her.  Nobody could manage it, as the best her playing partner could do was par 17 and 18 to finish 2 behind her, and the Road Hole was the decider for everyone else, as 1st Pettersen and Pressel and then Choi bogeyed it.  When Choi couldn't hole out for eagle on 18 as Catriona Matthew had to finish her 3rd round, Lewis became the WBO champion.

It was Lewis's 1st win since taking the 1st 2 LPGA tournaments of 2013 on American soil.  Having gone 5-0 as a Curtis Cupper at St. Andrews while still an amateur, Lewis understood something this week that it took her years to accept as a pro:  she didn't have to play perfect to win and she couldn't afford to waste her energy beating herself up for her mistakes when she could be confident everyone else would also be making a lot of them.  To be honest, she made plenty of them today, starting with 2 bogeys in her last 3 holes of her 3rd round and 2 more in her 1st 4 holes of her final round.  Despite that, Lewis found a way to win.  She has now won half the time she's gotten into the top 3 in her career, 8 times in 16 attempts.  Contrast that with NYC, who's 7 for 30, and you have to conclude that Lewis is the much better finisher.  It's fitting, then, that she outduelled NYC to take the 2013 WBO, just as she outduelled then-world #1 Ya Ni Tseng to take the 2011 Kraft Nabisco Championship, her only previous major and the last time an American had won an LPGA major after a 10-major run of Asian champions.

Huge congratulations, then, to Lewis, whose parents got to witness the win in person and celebrate it with her.  Let's hope she can lead Team USA to victory at the Solheim Cup!

[Update 1 (2:51 pm):  Here's Brent Kelley's overview.]