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...