The days are getting shorter and the weather has gotten chilly, so it must be our favorite time of year...time for my annual player profiles!  Over the next couple of weeks, I'll tackle each of my Top 30 plus a few others of interest.  After each player's name, I'll list in order where I had her ranked at the end of 2008, my preseason ranking, and the highest position she was ranked during the season.

1.  Lorena Ochoa  (1-1-1)

Ochoa's fourth consecutive HD Player of the Year title was her most hotly contested.  Ranked #5 in mid-September, she racked up six Top 6 finishes (including a win at Navistar and two runners-up) in her final seven events to overtake the lead pack.  Since 2005, Lorena had never failed to average less than 70 strokes per round, nor failed to finish in the Top 10 60% of the time, nor won fewer than six times.  Coming up short in all of those categories (but especially "only" winning three times) made her vulnerable to losing the award.  Ochoa beat out Jiyai Shin primarily because she extended her Made-Cut streak to 97 while Shin missed the cut at SBS, the season opener.

So what brought LaReina back within reach?  She was #1 in Total Driving in 2009, marking her third straight year leading that category.  She was fourth in Total Putting - up from 12^th after being fifth in 2007 and fourth in 2006.  She slightly improved her GIR rate from .716 last year to .722 but she lost ground relative to the competition.  While she was ranked first in GIR last year (and not by a narrow margin), she fell to T7 in 2009.  Still, such outstanding combined rankings in the Big Three Stats (which nobody surpassed, but a handful of others approached) should be indicative of the game's premier player.  I'll chalk up the close POY race to a small relative drop in Ochoa's iron play but mostly to her competitors raising their own levels of performance.

2.  Jiyai Shin  (3-2-1)

Going into the final weekend of the season, Jiyai had a chance to sweep the four major LPGA awards and went down to the final hole with a chance at the biggest prize.  Shin did walk away with the money title and the Rookie of the Year award, a double not accomplished since Karrie Webb did it 13 years ago.  Speaking of Karrie...at age 21 with only one full LPGA season behind her, Jiyai has already collected seven Hall of Fame points - more than a quarter of the number needed for automatic induction.  Webb's record of qualifying for the Hall at age 25 years seven months might be in danger.

3.  Ai Miyazato  (49-NR-3)

I figured at some point Miyazato was going to return to (at least) her 2006 form but I don't think anybody could have logically predicted this.  She wasn't playing well late in '08 after coming back from a leg injury in ‘07, so I didn't even list her as Honorable Mention in my preseason Top 30 list.  I shouldn't feel too bad...even "Ai Guy" The Constructivist only predicted a 16^th place 2009 for her.

Being one of only three players to rank in the Top 15 of all Big Three Stats underlines how great a season she had.  Ai improved from 97^th to 13^th in GIR, 45^th to fifth in Total Putting, and 116^th to 11^th in Total Driving.  It's hard to imagine anybody having a better across-the-board improvement from one season to the next than that.  Whether Miyazato can maintain that level of play over multiple seasons is the next big question.

4.  Cristie Kerr  (6-7-2)

I get the feeling that 2009 was the year that Cristie Kerr should have won either Rolex Player of the Year or the money title, which would have snapped streaks of 14 and 15 years respectively that an American player had not won either title.  With Annika Sorenstam gone and Lorena Ochoa down a half-notch, the time seemed ripe.  In early September Kerr led the way in both races but Shin's win at Arkansas knocked Cristie off both mountain tops and by the time they got to Houston, Ochoa too had passed her in POY points.  Only two Top 10s over her last six events snuffed out Kerr's title hopes.

Kerr has finished in my Top 10 for six straight years (tying her with Ochoa for the longest current streak) and has won at least one event for six straight years.  It's easy to forget that Cristie played seven full seasons prior to 2004 with only one victory (in 2002) and no Top 10 money list finishes.  She never finished higher than 14^th in my seasonal rankings during that time.  Just goes to show that not all great players come out smokin' in their first couple of seasons - although most of them do.

5.  Na Yeon Choi  (10-15-5)

NYC caught the late train home to the HD Top 5.  In mid-September she was ranked #13, about where she'd been camped out for most of her first year-and-three-quarters in the LPGA.  Then she won twice in three events - Samsung and Korea - to vault herself into the POY race.  Only one Top 10 in the final three events prevented Choi from winning it all, but it was a great finish.

Na Yeon's improvement from her rookie season isn't obvious from her stats.  Her putting improved slightly (up from 39 to 31) but she actually dropped slightly in driving (12 to 20) and GIR (6 to 14).  Considering how steady her game is week-to-week (no missed cuts through 53 career starts and no finishes worse than T53), the difference in her results for 2008 and 2009 is probably the difference between poor golfing luck and good.