I'm not going to try and paint a glowing picture of next year's 24-event schedule - the slimmest slate of LPGA tournaments since the early 1950s 1970s - but there are a few points I'd like to make.

The Tour's rank-and-file will suffer the most.  Pending the eventual insertion of the Korean event, there are 17 off-weeks and no lengthy consecutive tournament stretches (one five-week stretch mid-June to mid-July and one four-week stretch to end the season) so the higher priority players will certainly skip no more than two or three events.  Anybody who doesn't finish in the money list Top 100, Q-School Top 20 or Futures Tour Top 5 this year had better have alternate plans for 2010.

There are some pleasant surprises.  ShopRite's return was announced a couple of days ago.  The China event is listed, although honesty compels me to admit that it was on the 2009 schedule too until its lack of a sponsor and location caused it to be yanked.  I've predicted doom for the Corona Championship for the last two years but it lives on as the tentatively-named Tres Marias Championship.  We already knew the Bell Micro Classic was returning after being rescheduled from October.  The big downers include:

• Wegman's sponsorship of the LPGA Championship masks a net loss of one event.

• The addition of the Acapulco event only offsets the loss of the MasterCard.

• We knew the Michelob Ultra and Corning were gone, now the loss of Samsung as a sponsor has killed that event as well.

• The undetermined status of the Korea event is a very surprising bit of bad news.

One more thing to brighten your day - even with 24 events listed, the fact that three of them have TBDs listed alongside means it is very likely that less than 24 events will actually be played next year.  Last November, the 2009 schedule had 30 events listed (excluding Solheim) with a few TBDs scattered through it.  This week's Tour Championship will only be the 27^th tournament played.