As I detailed almost three weeks ago, the money list standings after the Corona Championship will alter the LPGA Priority list.  I haven't seen an official announcement from the Tour as yet but these will be the changes as I understand them:

Category 8 - Michelle Wie moves up from position 127 to 109 by virtue of being ranked #22 on the money list.  She is the only player in the money list Top 40 who wasn't already in a higher category than Cat-8.

Everyone in Cat-9 and everyone in Cat-11 down to previous #126 Lisa Strom falls one position in priority due to being passed up by Wie.

Category "13a" - I made up this category because the Priority Eligibility document states that players moving up from Categories 14 through 20 will line up "in priority behind Category 13", and we can't put them in Category 14 because they don't all fit the definition (Career Money Top 40).  We'll see how the official document lists them but for now I'm calling these players 13a.  The number to each one's left is that player's new position and the number in parentheses is her former position.

Cat-14 is now vacant since Brandie Burton moves "up" to 13a (of course she actually lost 11 valuable spots).  Cat-15 begins with Michelle Ellis at position 165 (down from 153) while Cat-16 begins with Angela Buzminski at position 228 (down two spots because Jackson and Kang moved past her).

As I've mentioned before, these changes don't seem like much - until you remember that there are 142 available slots in each full-field tournament before Monday qualifying.  Given a usual number of absentees among the top 142, the cut-off line has usually come around the 160 mark.  For Anna Nordqvist, Maggie Will, Haeji Kang and the others moving up from Categories 15a and 16, the 5-20 "real" positions they advanced (about 55 of the players in Cat-15a have retired) will make a huge difference in making an event or sitting one out.  I'll bet you that at least nine of the eleven players listed above whose positions were improved will get into at least one event from Sybase through Evian that they would not have made with their previous position.  Conversely, the active players in Category 15 who haven't earned any money so far in 2009 - Michelle Ellis, Becky Lucidi, Carri Wood and Young-A Yang - all lost 7-12 positions and now fall outside of the "golden 160" line.  I expect each of those four to miss at least one of those eight events that they would have made given their previous position - and there's a good chance they'll miss out on three or four.

UPDATE:  Moments after I posted this, I checked the link to the Priority Status page at LPGA.com and it has been updated.  It only shows Michelle Wie moved up to Category 8 and it now says that the players in Categories 13 on down will be reordered in line after Category 12, even though this updated list doesn't show those moves.  That definition change wouldn't alter the positions anyway.  The doc is dated 04/27 and I have the feeling we'll see it updated again shortly.

UPDATE 2:  The incorrect links above have now been fixed.  Sorry about that.