Let me start this post by congratulating Leah Wigger and Chella Choi for earning one of the Category 11 spots yesterday in a playoff against Allison Hanna-Williams and Na Ri Kim.

Secondly, I would like to apologize for the inaccuracies in my Q-School Final Round post yesterday afternoon and those contained in previous posts and responses to questions in various comment sections.

Thirdly and most importantly, I would like to take the LPGA brass to task for not only providing incomplete information on the qualifying procedure to the general public but to the contestants themselves.  Nowhere in the advance releases for Q-School was any mention that players finishing in the Top 20 who don't improve their previous status would have their results tossed out and open up a spot for Player #21 to attain Category 11 status.  On the contrary - the released information specifically stated that any players tied for 20^th place would play extra holes to break the ties, with no mention of any other possibilities.  Even now - 24 hours after the fact - LPGA.com has no explanation for why four players who finished tied for 21^st place were playing off for two Cat-11 spots.  We still don't know who the two players were who had their Top 20 results tossed out.

Speaking as a fan of many sports, a large part of the allure that these events have for me is in the anticipation/lead-in time of the event, specifically the "What Does This Event Mean" portion.  If I don't have a full (or nearly complete) understanding of what is at stake for the contestants, my interest in the event suffers significantly.  For example - when I am deciding which college football game to watch on Saturday afternoon, the context of the game is often more likely to influence my decision than the game itself.  I'll bet a lot of you think that way too, whether you've realized it or not.  This isn't the first time that I've used the available information from LPGA.com to spell out "what does this mean" on my blog, only to find out after the fact that one or more of the pertinent rules was omitted from general release.  FYI - I quit watching NASCAR because I got tired of the governing body "making up the rules as they went".

Now I want to tell you a story.  Yesterday afternoon, a friend of one of the Q-School players e-mailed me to ask for a copy of the memo which the LPGA posted on their site spelling out the various categories.  The link to that memo which I posted at the end of August broke down a couple of weeks later and I unfortunately did not save the .PDF file for myself beforehand.  This friend was trying to help the player understand better the priority procedure and was writing me because the LPGA had not given the player any information whatsoever.  She also told me that no one at the media tent had any information for the player and that someone there said the LPGA officials were "trying to figure out what was what" during the final round.

Think about that for a minute.  Via one of her friends, a player at the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament was trying to get qualifying information from some guy in Douglasville, Georgia because the LPGA wasn't making it available to her, even on the last day that the player had an opportunity to improve her status.

I can't overstate how ridiculous this is.  Granted, the priority status process is being used for the first time.  But the Tour has had over three months since it was announced to work out all of the specifics for how the process is supposed to work.  To get to the final round of the Q-School Finals and still not have all of the details in hand (or better, be well-known by all of the participants) is inexcusable on the part of the LPGA.  The officials in Commissioner Bivens' administration need to develop and deliver these procedures in a timely and serious manner if they expect the players to treat the administration or the procedures with any respect.