Corona Championship – Epilogue

Lorena Ochoa became the first two-time winner of 2009 yesterday without her caddy Dave Brooker.  He broke his foot playing in the tournament's annual soccer match Saturday evening, so coach Rafael Alarcon carried her bag during the final round.

Suzann Pettersen came up short but it was an outstanding performance befitting a Top 10 player.  Four rounds in the 60s, one of them an event-record-tying 64 and a bogey-free 68 on Sunday playing head-to-head with the best player in the world.  Looking at it another way, Suzann would have dominated the field and won by six shots had Lorena not been playing.

The scoring average of 72.71 was the second-lowest of the seven events played so far this year and the first to average below par.  It was more than half a stroke under the previous low for this event, 73.28 in 2007.

She struggled a bit down the stretch but Wendy Ward had a great week, finishing in fourth place for her first Top 5 since the Jamie Farr in July 2007.  Even though she managed a couple of Top 10s last year, I'm awarding Wendy this week's Big Surprise.  This probably isn't a fair choice but I'm giving the Big Disappointment to Brittany Lincicome.  Following up her Kraft Nabisco win with a missed cut wasn't what I expected to see.

The only player in Categories 9 through 12 who posted a good finish at Corona was Michelle Wie (T10), who already had a Top 40 money list position locked up.  So Michelle will move up to Category 8 all by her lonesome beginning at the Sybase event.  Vicky Hurst came close - she also finished T10, earning $25,763 but will come up short of the Top 40 (which hadn't been posted at LPGA.com as of this writing).

Of the Category 14-and-down players, Jimin Jeong made the most hay.  She finished 12^th, earned $23,121 and will jump to about 60^th on the money list, which should put her at the top of the reordered list (Category 13a, as I called it in my Reordering post).  That move is only about nine positions but around the 150 mark, that's a big deal.  Anna Nordqvist finished T17 despite her Sunday 75 and the resulting $15,000 will boost her into the 150s range.  Brandi Jackson, Na Ri Kim and Allison Hanna-Williams all made $3000 and change to help themselves - I'll wait for the official money list to get updated before I'll say how much it helped.