Longs Drugs Challenge – Epilogue

In-Kyung Kim's first career victory came in her 49^th start.  The closest she had come before was a two-hole playoff loss to Lorena Ochoa at last year's Wegmans.  Kim was riding a streak of five straight Top 20 finishes coming into Longs so this performance wasn't out of the blue.  Most people seem to like shortening her first name to IK but to me, "Inky" fits perfectly.  Of course, I played Pac-Man a lot in my younger days...

The average score at Blackhawk Country Club was 74.26, the fifth-highest out of 28 events in 2008.  The U.S. Open average has been the highest so far, at 75.57.  This was the highest scoring Longs Drugs Challenge I have recorded, over half a stroke higher than last year.  After 39 players broke par Thursday, the numbers dwindled to 17 Friday, 14 Saturday and only nine players under par on Sunday.  For the event, only 11 players finished under par.  Not a single player scored under par all four days and Brittany Lang was the only one who didn't post a round over par.

Angela Stanford continued her great play.  The final round of 75 looks ugly but in context, it was an average day at the office.  She had chances to grab her second win in three starts but couldn't take advantage.  Three straight finishes in the top three puts Angela atop the Hot List this week.

The Round of the Week had to belong to Kristy McPherson, who shot a 71 on Saturday with one eye closed.  Literally.  Her right eye was swollen shut (I missed hearing what the cause was) and she put up a score that was more than three strokes better than the field.  Kristy wound up finishing tied for fifth, her sixth Top 10 of the year and fifth since the beginning of July.

This week's Big Surprise is shared by Silvia Cavalleri and Mikaela Parmlid.  Silvia finished tied for fifth to earn her first Top 10 (and only the 10^th of her 10-year career) since winning Corona last year.  Mikaela finished T9, her career best and only the second Top 10 of her five-year career.  The Big Disappointment goes to Seon Hwa Lee, who missed the cut by one shot.

Several Bubble Girls helped their cause this week - Parmlid and Mollie Fankhauser, most notably.  I'll update the Top 80/100 races a little later today.