J Golf Phoenix Preview

As it has every year since 1980, the LPGA travels this week to Phoenix to play the newly christened J Golf Phoenix LPGA International Presented By Mirassou Winery (hey - if those sponsors keep paying their money, I'll keep typing out these long-a** tournament names!).  This event had no sponsor at all through the first of the year, signed up Mirassou in January and then landed J Golf as the primary sponsor (in what may be a one-shot deal - they will supposedly front an event in Southern California next year).  Lorena Ochoa won last year's event, pulling away from the field on Sunday to win by seven shots.

Papago is hosting the ladies for the first time.  Fresh off a renovation project just completed in December, the layout is slightly longer than Superstition Mountain.  Larry Smich walked the course a couple of times in recent weeks - here and here are his assessments of the new track.  I hope that dead cat was finally removed!

The prime scheduling slot for any LPGA tournament is the week before a major.  The best players always want to tune up for the big ones, and Phoenix gets the field boost from the Kraft Nabisco again this year.  With only Jeong Jang and Maria Hjorth among my Top 40 missing for various health reasons, this is our strongest full-field event since the British Open last August.  Consequently, the cut position at #157 (Becky Lucidi) is the highest we've seen among the three full-field events in 2009.

Since Cannuck asked about the odds Karen was quoting during last week's Inside The LPGA, I thought I would start including a link to each week's odds via Oddschecker.com.  Gambling on women's golf is neither encouraged nor recommended by Hound Dog LPGA, at least not with the kind of prognostication record I've got!

I'll admit it - I thought I had a sure thing with last week's pick of Yani Tseng.  For 71 holes, it was looking pretty good too.  Her three-putt at the last hole cost me my first outright winner of the year and gave me my first failure to pick the winner in my top 12.  At least I had six Top 10s among my picks and I finished fourth in the PakPicker contest.  Let's go back to the old tried-and-true for this week's choice.