My final three installments of profiles will focus on an assortment of players who finished in the Top 70.

#31  Brittany Lang

As part of the greatest rookie class in LPGA history in 2006, Lang ranked #25 on Tour with seven Top 10 finishes.  In comparison, Brittany's 2007 was - to put it nicely - crappy.  12 missed cuts in 27 starts with only two Top 10s.  This year, she started off fairly well with Top 10s at Safeway, SemGroup and Sybase but suffered the summer heat with five missed cuts in one eight-event stretch.  Then - just as she did during her rookie season - Lang closed out strong, running up five straight Top 10s to end the year.

What part of Brittany's game enabled the resurgence?  I'm glad you asked.  She drove the ball a little better in ‘08 and improved her GIR ranking from 26^th to 10^th.  While her putting average was only a little better (92 to 83), her PPGIR improved significantly from T108 to T57.  So the short answer seems to be - everything, but mostly putting.

#32  Juli Inkster

Only played 18 events, the fewest of her career besides those two seasons where she was out for maternity reasons (1990, 1994).  Three Top 10s, two Top 5s, a playoff loss to Paula Creamer at SemGroup, only two missed cuts.  I get the feeling she's going to play through next year's Solheim Cup and call it quits, either immediately or at the end of 2009.

#34  Jane Park

Even though she had yet to win, Jane moved as high as #20 in my July rankings on the strength of four Top 5 finishes.  In my mind, there were only two players more likely than her to collect their first victory by the end of the season - Na Yeon Choi and Song-Hee Kim.  I was wrong about all three.  After tying for second in Arkansas and finishing T16 at State Farm, Park played ten more times without ever posting better than T20.  It wasn't exactly a collapse as her worst finish was T53 but the word for Jane down the stretch was "mediocre". 

#35  Momoko Ueda

My preseason pick for Rookie of the Year finished third in my rankings - behind Tseng and Choi - and fourth in Rolex points - behind Hee Young Park.  If I had known during preseason that Momoko would only make 19 starts (and just two after August 3), I would have chosen somebody else.  She missed some time because of a freak accident but she also chose to play several JLPGA fall events.

Have Miyazato and Ueda established the standard schedule that Japanese stars who come to America will continue to follow?  Ai only played 21 times her rookie season, upped it to 25 in 2007 but cut back to 23 this year.  By comparison, most of the Korean players who have "graduated" from the KLPGA usually wind up with about 28-30 starts per year.  With the pressure I'm sure they get from their local media to play in front of the home folks plus their natural inclination to go back home a couple of times a season, we may continue to see less of the Japanese stars (including newcomers Shiho Oyama and Mika Miyazato) than we see of any other LPGA regulars.

#36  Stacy Prammanasudh

I expected Stacy to fall out of my Top 10 (she finished 2007 at #7) but NOT to fall out of my Top 30.  She was hanging in there for most of the season but in her last eight events she missed three cuts and finished no better than T24.  The culprit?  Looks like the putter - T13 and T10 in the two putting stats for '07, T33 and T79 for '08.  She actually drove the ball better this year and was about the same in GIR both years.