Eun Hee Ji had been playing fairly well this year with four Top 10s in 13 starts but she had missed the cut twice in her last five.  She was ranked in my Top 20 going into the Open and will likely be in the Top 10 when I release the latest rankings in the next day or so.  This was her second career victory (last year's Wegmans was her first) and of course, her first major championship.

I don't like to toot my own horn too often and even though I hedged a bit on my statement in last week's Preview by using the word "may", I must point out that nobody finished the tournament under par.

Thanks to the forward tees used over the weekend, the scoring at Saucon Valley ended up about like usual for a U.S. Women's Open - 75.50.  This after the first two days averaged a stroke higher than that.

I would like to thank my wife for allowing me to spend about 15 hours this weekend live-blogging the last three rounds.  She was (still is, actually) recovering from a nasty poison ivy attack and seemed quite happy to let me type away as long as I was able to keep the supply of Benedryl and calamine coming in between updates.  As for the live-blogging itself - I enjoyed it, but will probably have to reserve it for final rounds only in the future to avoid burning myself out.  Nothing worse than a burned-out Hound Dog!

I'm sure somebody somewhere has already pointed this out (she's an American, you know) but Paula Creamer would have won the U.S. Open had she somehow shaved five strokes off of her Saturday 79.  If you start by assuming she doesn't take driver at 10 and pars it instead of triple-bogeying, there's three shots already and her poisoned attitude over the last eight holes probably cost her a couple more.  Paula's 6^th place finish goes to prove you never know which lost shots beat you until the tournament is over.

Larry Smich mentioned a player who is apparently throwing in the towel:

Adios, ta-ta, auf wiedersehen: No matter how you say it, it's still goodbye. One looper received a surprising text from his player indicating it was not just for the week, but for good! This youngster has decided to pack it in altogether and quit playing the Tour I was told.

The wording leads me to believe that it wasn't a player who missed the cut.  So focusing on the WD list and recent results by "young players", I think he's talking about Jin Joo Hong.  Coincidentally, Larry worked her bag at State Farm last month.  Guess we'll find out at Evian, where Hong is in the field.

This week's low amateur, Jennifer Song, finished T13 and is my Big Surprise Award winner.  Song won the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship just two weeks ago so maybe we shouldn't be all that surprised.  A citizen of both the U.S. and South Korea, Jennifer was a freshman at USC this past school year (info courtesy GolfBabes.com).  I was surprised that Angela Stanford missed the cut this week but she isn't the Big Disappointment.  I pegged Yani Tseng for a top three finish and she missed the cut by five shots.  It was the first time this year that Yani had finished worse than T23.