Jiyai Shin's victory pushes her over the $1 million mark for the 2009 season and she takes over the top spot on the LPGA money list.  She says her goal for this year is to win Rookie of the Year - she holds a commanding 405-point edge in that race - but she's now a serious candidate in the Player of the Year race as well.

Of the 14 players who finished in this week's Top 10, six are rookies.  Four of them - Shin, Stacy Lewis, Haeji Kang and Mika Miyazato - finished in the top six.  Other than Cristie Kerr, there wasn't anybody you'd comfortably call a veteran anywhere among the first ten.  Speaking of Kerr - that's what I call a rollercoaster weekend.  Three double-bogeys, seven bogeys, 19 birdies and an eagle.  None of the doubles or bogeys came on Friday as she shot 65, two of the doubles and the eagle came on Saturday as she shot 71.  She birdied four times on Thursday and still shot 75.  All that and a Top 10 too.  Break out the Dramamine, Cristie!

With a 40% chance of rain forecast for Sunday afternoon, I was a little surprised that the tee times weren't moved up (the last group went off at 12:30).  Sure enough, the final pairings were forced to play their entire back nines in rainy conditions and the poor play made for some pretty awful TV.  I'm not sure anybody would have caught Shin otherwise (although the tough conditions would have made it more likely for Jiyai to blow up) but we'll never know for sure.  Afterwards, Stacy Lewis was Tweeting similar sentiments to mine:

Question of the day: Why didn't we tee off earlier?

Considering she played her last six holes in +4 (costing herself about $100,000 in the process), I understand her frustration.  Morgan Pressel put as good a spin on her horrible afternoon as she could but she was wondering the same thing:

Will never understand why we didn't tee off earlier when they knew the weather.

One more thing about the tee times and I'll stop.  When the TV coverage was going to be tape-delayed anyway, what would have been the harm in going with groups of three and getting everyone underway before 11am?

This week's Big Surprise is Haeji Kang.  Haeji was one of the players I mentioned on Thursday as needing to at least make the cut, and she did a lot more than that.  She finished tied for fourth, her first career Top 10, and earned nearly $85,000.  Kang won't have to worry about making any fields for the rest of the year.  As for the other players who made the Wegmans cut - Sarah Kemp finished T15, Carri Wood was T53 and Brandi Jackson was T68.  Kemp is just outside the money list Top 80 so she is in good shape for the rest of the year.  Wood and Jackson aren't quite so well off but at least they earned some cash which will bump them up a little.

There was one more "Last Chance" player who made the cut but her story is a sad one.  Becky Lucidi was -2, making the cut with room to spare, but the rain-scrambled schedule confused her and she was late for her Saturday morning tee time.  The DQ cost her at least $3800 (probably more like $6000-8000) and approximately 7-8 positions on the money list.

I'm sure Becky was disappointed but she doesn't get my Big Disappointment Award.  I'm not giving it to Paula Creamer either - she hurt her thumb (apparently teeing off at #4 on Friday) and withdrew but is expected to play Thursday at the Farr.  I'm going to split the award between Song-Hee Kim, Hee-Won Han and Katherine Hull, who all missed the cut.

One more thing.  Michelle Wie finished T10, which apparently didn't surprise Judy Rankin.  On Saturday Judy said that Locust Hill was the kind of course that Michelle should "overpower" meaning that since it is short, a player with Wie's length should find it easy.  Right...a course with trees that squeeze the fairway landing areas and rough thick from two weeks of rain should be a breeze for a player who can't hit 60% of the fairways no matter how wide they are.  Wie played great this week (aside from the 75 she posted on Saturday) but there was no way she was going to win hitting only 33 of 56 fairways.