LPGA Hana Bank Championship Preview

This week, the Tour makes its ninth trip to South Korea for the LPGA Hana Bank Championship.  Sky 72 Golf Club in Incheon is the venue for the third time.  Na Yeon Choi won last year's event in front of the home folks (making her the sixth Korean winner out of eight events here) by one shot over Maria Hjorth and Yani Tseng.

Sky 72 GC is about average in terms of length and it plays a little tougher average as far as the scores will tell you.  Oftentimes the scores at this tournament are higher because of chilly weather.  The worst was three years ago when a week before the event, a monsoon dumped 20 inches of rain on Mauna Ocean Golf & Resort.  This was immediately followed by freezing weather and high winds.  By Sunday's final round, the greens were so bare that the players couldn't keep a ball stationary after marking and replacing it.  That was the year the final round was cancelled (Suzann Pettersen was declared the winner) and quite a few angry fans threatened to storm the tournament headquarters in protest.  This weekend's forecast is sunny with highs in the low 60s - chilly again.  They really shouldn't play Korea in late October.

The top 55 players on the money list as of October 12 make this event.  Like in Malaysia, a few are skipping Korea but the field is still a very good one.  Yani Tseng, Ai Miyazato and Karrie Webb are the missing headliners...no, wait.  Se Ri Pak is not listed in the field either.  Korea's biggest superstar is passing up her home country's sole Tour event for a celebrity pro-am in China (thanks to the Seoulsisters gang for the link).  I wonder what the local media think of that decision.  One positive surprise among the listed is Kristy McPherson.  We were told a few weeks ago that she was undergoing season-ending surgery after CVS; apparently that didn't happen.  Hee Kyung Seo makes her first start in an LPGA event since the British Open.  She's one of the 16 KLPGA regulars teeing it up.

I've already mentioned that six of the eight winners in this event have been Korean - three of those weren't even LPGA members when they won so you have to consider the KLPGA contingent very seriously when making picks.  We know about Seo and Jin Joo Hong, but there's also Ran Hong, So-Yeon Ryu and Bo-Mee Lee (three 2010 wins and a major title just last week).  This extra wrinkle makes a bad prognosticator's work even tougher, so why not just go with the defending champ?