The LPGA returns from its three-week tournament hiatus (and for a lot of players, twice that) to contest the Safeway Classic.  This event has been held in the Portland area since 1972.  The venue changes to renowned Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club after spending the last 19 years at Columbia Edgewater Country Club.  The 2003 U.S. Women's Open was played at Pumpkin Ridge, albeit on the Witch Hollow course not Ghost Creek.  That was the Open that Hilary Lunke won in a playoff over Angela Stanford and Kelly Robbins.  Cristie Kerr won last year's Safeway Classic in a one-hole playoff over Helen Alfredsson and Sophie Gustafson.

This is only the third 54-hole event of the year and our first since the MasterCard Classic back in March.  Just a couple of years ago it seemed like half of the events started on Friday.  This is also the first of six consecutive weeks the ladies will be in action, twice the longest streak we've seen so far this season.  Lastly, Safeway appears to be the final LPGA event to be covered by ESPN, as GC has the market cornered on the remaining events televised in the U.S. (NBC gets the weekend rounds of Samsung).

Larry Smich reports that Ghost Creek is quite the challenge.  The front nine is very tight with some serious elevation changes.  The back is somewhat more open but the elevation changes there are even more severe.  Combine those facts with the above average length, and something tells me the overall 2009 Scoring Average is going to vault above 73 after this weekend.

The combination of Field Score 99 and the Last Player In being Player #317 is highly unusual.  With 39 of my top 40 players in the field (only Juli Inkster is out), I would have expected the cutoff number to be 155-160.  A few players in the 40-70 range are out - Angela Park misses her third straight event since the Retirement Rumor, Mi Hyun Kim has apparently begun her maternity leave - and a few others down the line aren't here, like Minea Blomqvist and Jin Joo Hong.  What opens the door for these low-priority players is that at lot of their peers apparently just didn't enter the event.  Brandie Burton, Na Ri Kim, Maggie Will, Michelle Ellis, Young-A Yang, Michelle McGann and Kate Golden could be playing but aren't.  Tania Elosegui (#231) could have followed up her fine Solheim performance with a trip to Portland but didn't.  Song Yi Choi (#232) entered and is playing.  Samantha Richdale got a sponsor's exemption this week but didn't even need it - as player #229, she was in anyway.  Seems like a lot of these players assumed (just like I did) that everybody would show up this week after the long layoff and got burned.

With the long layoff and playing a new course, that doesn't leave a lot to key on for making picks.  I decided to choose from those who were playing well and also rank well in Total Driving with an emphasis on hitting the fairway.  I also slightly devalued those who played at Solheim, figuring on a little fatigue