My wife was surprised by two bits of information I passed on to her yesterday afternoon.  First - Catriona Matthew will turn 40 later this month.  Second - Matthew had only won twice before since beginning her LPGA career in 1995.  Her first win was in 2001 at the Cup Noodles Hawaiian Ladies Open.  That year she came in 10^th in my rankings and remained in my season-ending Top 20 through 2005.  Catriona fell back in the rankings in 2006 primarily because she was carrying her first child (she stopped playing in late August) and returned to the Top 30 in 2007.  She didn't play so well last year but did rank #42 with three Top 10s and four missed cuts.  Matthew somehow won the HSBC Brazil Cup in January while five months pregnant and finished T45 at the HSBC Women's Champions event in her seventh month.  Now a major championship victory not too far from home, just 11 weeks removed from delivery and one week after fleeing a burning hotel in France.  Quite a story.  Catriona is an easy choice for this week's Big Surprise Award.

Better conditions over the weekend lowered the overall scoring average to 76.08, almost even with St. Andrews two years ago (which played to par of 73).  Matthew was the only player to finish under par and she won despite only breaking par twice over the four rounds.  Several players recovered from rough Thursdays to post good finishes.  Karrie Webb finished second and Hee-Won Han tied for third after opening with 77s, Na Yeon Choi tied for eighth after starting with an 80 and In-Kyung Kim wound up T20 after shooting 81 the first day.  If Sherri Steinhauer had been around, she might have won this thing like she did in 1998 when she had a terrible first round and came back to win her first British Open.

Jane Park shot 75 Sunday and faded to T17, missing out on the Solheim team.  Karen Stupples missed the cut, which might make you think she cost herself a Solheim berth with that performance until you notice that Janice Moodie missed the cut too.  More on the Solheim teams to come in another post.

The Big Disappointment Award has a few good candidates.  The missed-cut list contains a lot of Top 30 players like Helen Alfredsson, Lindsey Wright, Seon Hwa Lee, Ji Young Oh, Natalie Gulbis and Jee Young Lee.  The best of them however was Suzann Pettersen, so she gets the dubious honor.

Lorena Ochoa didn't miss the cut but she only finished T28, meaning she failed to finish in the Top 10 in any of the 2009 major championships.  The last year that happened was 2001, two years before her rookie season.  In 2002 Lorena finished eighth at the Kraft Nabisco and every year since had collected at least two Top 10s in the four majors.  In 2007 she was Top 10 in all four.

So the dog days of August are finally here - that awkward break in the LPGA schedule where the vast majority of players won't tee it up until the final weekend of the month in the Safeway Classic.  Yes we have Solheim the week before that but the next two weekends are going to feel very strange.  With the 2010 schedule looking even more barren, the lengthy breaks are going to become more common in all likelihood.  Some creative juggling might mask the problem a little bit (move a northern event like the State Farm or Farr from June to August) but the holes will be still be plentiful.  I have confidence that the Interim Commissioner is already taking steps to alleviate the problem (and her permanent replacement will continue them) but that process will be a slow one.  As for us fans, we'll just have to be patient.