Corona Championship Preview
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Defending Champion - Lorena Ochoa Tres Marias Residential Country Club 72 holes, begins Thursday Par 73, 6539 yards Tournament Odds - from Oddschecker.com Last Player In - Simi Mehra (#324) First Players Out - Hana Kim (#325), Tracy Hanson, A.J. Eathorne Scoring Averages - 74.68 (2008), 73.28 (2007), 73.53 (2006) 2009 Scoring Average to date - 73.91 U.S. TV coverage - none |
Good news! The ladies are back in action this week at the fifth-annual Corona Championship. Bad news! Unless you have access to ESPN2 in Mexico, you won't get to see any TV coverage. Even ESPN Deportes is passing on the event. Oh well, online leaderboard watching will have to suffice. Lorena Ochoa won last year's event by 11 strokes, clinching her Hall of Fame berth in the process. She also won Corona in 2006, her two career homeland victories both coming on this very course.
As is typical of the courses the LPGA has played South of the Border, Tres Marias is very hilly and about a mile above sea level. Perhaps the oddest thing about the layout is the par of 73. Three years running, the winner of this event has cleared -20 over the four rounds (Ochoa finished -25 last year) with par set at that uncomfortable number. I don't think the players would mind too much if the shortest par-5 was trimmed back to a four - even at last year's standard, Lorena would have still posted -21 and five others would have been -8 or better.
As I mentioned two weeks ago, this is event #7 on the schedule and the priority status for players from Category 9 on down will be modified at its completion. The new status list will be used beginning at Sybase. As you can see above by the cutoff point at position #324, many players have a chance to help themselves. The Field Score of 63 doesn't sound like much (tied with SBS for weakest so far in 2009) but it is outstanding compared to last year's 13 (that is NOT a typo). Seven of my Top 10 and 15 of my Top 20 players are here, making Corona a much less likely Fluke Victory target than it was in past years. One player is returning from her extended layoff this week - Maria Hjorth is in the field for the first time this year, coming back after the birth of her first child.
I'm starting to feel a little snake-bit with my predictions. Twice in the last three tournaments, my pick to win was leading on the Sunday back nine yet I still have a big goose egg in the Winner column. When times get tough, I believe in going back to the old tried-and-true...
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1. Lorena Ochoa 2. Suzann Pettersen 3. Karrie Webb 4. Cristie Kerr 5. Yani Tseng 6. Song-Hee Kim 7. Kristy McPherson 8. Na Yeon Choi 9. Katherine Hull 10. Paula Creamer 11. Brittany Lang 12. Pat Hurst
Stats: Winner 0-6 Winner in Top 12 3-6 Top 10s 30 5.0 |
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2 comments
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Comments
here's mine
http://mlyhlss.blogspot.com/2009/04/corona-championship-previewpredictionsp.html
Will be in Minneapolis at a conference this weekend and travelling Th and Su, so my posting will likely be late this week….
by The Constructivist on Apr 21, 2009 10:57 PM PDT reply actions
It should be changed to par 72
As a general rule, the lower under par the more I lose interest.
I have a feeling this is like the early years of the college football BCS formula, where they would backfit to prevent something from happening again, but didn’t astutely project future problems, so further alterations we’re subsequently required. I think the priority category specifics will be tweaked at the end of the year, and you’ll be evaluating the new vs. the old at this point in 2010. Then the same thing in 2011…
BTW, Kim Welch was apparently a late withdrawal from the Futures Tour event. Her name is absent from the final player roster and the pairings. So maybe something else is going on with her. I don’t believe she has missed a Futures Tour event in several years.

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