HSBC Women’s Champions Preview

Part Two of the winter Asian Swing is another limited field event, the second-annual HSBC Women's Champions.  78 players will take aim at Tanah Merah Country Club, while 77 of them aim to prevent Lorena Ochoa from defending her title and opening her season with two straight victories.  I'm sure all of them hope they can at least keep it closer than they did a year ago - Ochoa led the inaugural wire-to-wire and won by 11 shots.

The field is about as strong as it could get, as Jeong Jang and Stacy Lewis are the only members of my Top 30 who are absent.  HSBC uses a combination of criteria to qualify the players - Rolex Rankings, major champions, worldwide tournament champions, etc.  All will play four rounds with no cut.

The TV coverage will be tape-delayed in the U.S. of course.  With only an hour of airtime each day, the golf will have more of a highlights feel rather than the usual real-time flow.  Why we don't get any Thursday action, I don't know but what we do have beats the big zero we got from Thailand.  Last year's coverage came through an Australian TV network and the production was quite good.

So I posted my top 12 picks last week and then completely forgot to enter them into the PakPicker competition!  Only five of my picks made the Top 10 so while I wouldn't have finished last, I wouldn't have won either.  Hopefully I won't let that slip my mind again anytime soon.  Here are this week's Twelve: