Hana Bank Championship - Epilogue
by hound dog on Nov 1, 2010 5:01 AM PDT
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Na Yeon Choi's second win of 2010 creates a four-way race for Rolex Player of the Year honors with only three events remaining. Yani Tseng leads the way with 176 points, followed by Ai Miyazato with 174, Cristie Kerr with 166 and Choi with 164. We thought last year's race was a good one.... NYC became the first player to successfully defend an LPGA title since Lorena Ochoa at the 2009 Navistar Classic.
Choi's winning total of -10 matched her victorious performance of last year and as such equaled only the fourth lowest winning score in this event. Surprisingly then, was the overall scoring average of 72.81, the lowest average in Korea since the 2004 edition. Nearly half the field shot even par or better, a feat not often duplicated here.
Even though she wasn't missing any cuts in recent weeks, Vicky Hurst's season wasn't going nearly as well as many of us had expected. Coming into this event, Hurst had failed to finish in the Top 30 in six of her last seven starts and had slipped towards the bottom of my Top 70. The runner-up finish was the best of her young LPGA career and earns Vicky this week's Big Surprise Award - hopefully, the final one of her career.
Big-Big Shoutout goes to Kristy McPherson, who instead of having back surgery to end her season, decided to make the trip and collected her third Top 10 in her last five starts. Whatever alternative treatment she's getting for her back problem she needs to pass on to Grace Park and Natalie Gulbis pronto!
Since the English KLPGA website doesn't seem to exist any more, I don't know whether Hee Kyung Seo was playing well or not coming in. Quite a few other people picked the Kia Classic champion in the Seoulsisters Pakpicker contest so I'll have to assume she was. For finishing T68 in a 74-player field, Seo gets the Big Disappointment Award.
For the second week in a row, I began my Monday morning ritual of updating my spreadsheets (player rankings, who's hot, etc.) only to discover that the LPGA stat lists have not been updated. C'mon guys - you've had since 5am EDT Sunday to do this and since you don't have the fairway/GIR data to worry about (I'll refrain from ranting on that this time), updating the money list, scoring and Top 10 categories should be a snap. If you don't care enough about this stuff to post it in a timely manner, why should we?
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The Rolex didn't update till nearly noon Monday...
maybe they all went out trick-or-treating?
BTW, what do you think about the “tiering” that happened this week? We’ve got 6 players between 10 and 11 points on the Rolex, then 5 between 7 and 8 points, and it drops off from there. Are we finally seeing the Tour’s “players to beat” distinguish themselves, or is this just a freak happening in the stats?
Mike Southern
www.ruthlessgolf.com
The LPGA stats didn't update their stats until then either.
NYC takes over the top spot in scoring average and money list and Shin takes the top spot in the Rolex Rankings. When Kerr moved up the LPGA.com had it as their 2nd story on Sunday befor the rankings even came out and were part of the tournament interview and wrap-up. Last weeks tournament wrap-up gave the top 3 Rolex Rankings (with Kerr on top) on Sunday. This week’s tournament wrap-up and interview page, not so much. Still no similar story on LPGA site but there is a story on how you can bid on Michelle Wie tournament worn capri pants and shirt.
the tiering is always there
It’s just more noticable where there are gaps between them. Looking at my own rankings, there is definitely a premier group of players (Tseng, Kerr, A.Miyazato, Choi, Shin), a second group who are having very good seasons (Pettersen, SH Kim, Creamer, Wie, IK Kim, I.Park), and a third group who either haven’t won or haven’t managed to sustain good play for the whole year (Pressel, A.Yang, Hull, Lincicome, JY Lee)
here's my rundown of all the key races
Choi now leads 4 of the 5 I’m tracking:
http://mlyhlss.blogspot.com/2010/11/hana-bank-championship-sunday-na-yeon.html
by The Constructivist on Nov 1, 2010 10:43 AM PDT reply actions
and the bar is being raised
The 3 May Rolex Rankings (the day after Ochoa’s last LPGA event) shows Ji Yai Shin passing Lorena Ochoa with 9.29 points. The 6th highest point total in that poll was Christie Kerr with 7.55 points. Now the Rolex Rating for 1 – 6 is 10.86 for Shin and 10.14 for Yani Tseng. In May, the range for 6th – 11th was 6.95 to 5.62. Now Michelle Wie sits in 7th place at 7.92 and Sun Ju Ahn holds 11th with 7.15. That’s a significant increase up and down the line.
The competition is pushing the performance of the top players higher. The players in the Rolex Ranking show up very consistantly near the top of the leaderboard and the events are seeing higher field scores. If the LPGA could figue out a better schedule, that puts the off weeks in the natural breaks in the schedule, these field scores could be even higher and the sponsors of some events won’t feel so snubbed..
BTW, With Lorena Ochoa no longer in the Rolex Rankings and playing in her own event; what is her affect on the field score for Mexico.
At the moment, Ochoa ranks #18 in my system so her presence next week will add three points to the Field Score (1-10=4, 11-20=3, 21-30=2, 31-40=1).
Interesting observations on the Rolex scores. With no one dominant player, it stands to reason that most of the points “vacated” by Ochoa would be dispersed among the next several players in line. Your notion that the stronger fields could also be boosting the Rolex scores is terrific – that might be the biggest single reason for the higher scores.
It's definitely more than the points vacated by Lorena Ochoa
………………………………………………….3 MAY 10…………….1 NOV 10…………..Net Change
Total Points (top 11)…………………………..4026.95……………..4891.34…………………..864.39
Total Events (top 11)……………………………….519…………………..529……………………….10
Average Points (total points/events)……………..7.76…………………9.25……………………..1.49
Lorena Ochoa 2nd place accounted for about 387 of the total points in the 3 May results. Even with her results included, there were much more points (864.39) earned by the top 11 in the 1 November Rolex Rankings. The retirement of Ji Yai Shin would put alot more points back in the pool (651.38).
While stronger fields may yield better field scores and more points for 2nd – 70th place, there is a points premium place on victories, especially victories at the LPGA events that attract the most top players (sorry Jamie Farr and CVS) Ji Yai Shin didn’t get the same bump winning on the KLPGA and JLPGA as she did winning the Evian. Unfortunately there are fewer places to get LPGA top field wins and those wins are harder because the elevated level of competition.
I beleive that while the strength of field may give a bit of an increase to the Rolex Ranking averages, there is also a higher level of play in these top two tiers of LPGA talent. It’s mostly the same group of names from May to November but they now appear more consistant in delivering top 10 performances.
Not saying Shin is retiring, is considering retiring, or should retire. I’m just saying that her high level of performance (10.86 points per event) in more events (60 events versus the 48.1 event average of the top 11 ranked players) has a greater impact on the Rolex Ranking. Note I did not say the LPGA tour. Lorena Ochoa carried the banner and was a great ambassador for the LPGA for a long time. Ji Yai Shin has great potential to do that but she is not there yet.
by sports medic on Nov 2, 2010 10:52 AM PDT up reply actions
Rolex points decrease over two years until they are dropped. In the offseason all players see their numbers drop. The numbers are low early in the season and rise to their highest point at the end before dropping again. It would be nice to have points for a hypothetical player who plays every LPGA event and no others and wins them all. We could see how the numbers vary over the year.
Doing it your way still makes my point...
I understand how the points are determined. You do have a good point about point levels decreasing during the offseason. So in the interest of fairness I’ll compare this weeks stats (1 Nov 10) to the stats of a year ago (2 Nov 09). That’s as far back as I can go at the Rolex Ranking site. The rankings of 2 November 2009 include Lorena Ochoa as the number 1 ranked golfer with 504.04 points in 42 events.
………………………………………………….2 NOV 09…………….1 NOV 10…………..Net Change
Total Points (top 11)…………………………..4301.52……………..4891.34…………………..589.82
Total Events (top 11)……………………………….609…………………..529……………………….-80
Average Points (total points/events)……………..7.06…………………9.25……………………..2.19
So the top 11 players in the 1 November 2010 playing in 80 fewer events generated 589.82 more points than the top 11 from a year ago. And as a group they increased their average by 2.19 Rolex points.
Rolex data
lpga.com has Rokex Rankings under stats and news. You can go back one year at a time to when they started.
November 2009 is a good benchmark. It’s the same week of the year, so as you said, the results should be comparable. It’s 6 months before Lorena Ochoa’s retirement. You made the point that going from her last Rolex Rankings in May 2010 is not appropriate because it’s at a different point in the season. Another reason to compare to 2 November 2009 it is that the players comprising of the top 11 is very similar to what it is today.
Just to be thorough, I looked back and the closest I could find was 6 November 2006. The top 3 were Sorenstam, Ochoa, and Webb. also on that list was Kerr, Inkster, Miyazato, Jang, Creamer, Oshyama, Hurst, and Wie. The results for that week were as follows:
………………………………………………….6 NOV 06…………….1 NOV 10…………..Net Change
Total Points (top 11)……………………………..4582….……………..4891……………………..309
Total Events (top 11)………………………….…..526…………………..529……………………….3
Average Points (total points/events)……….…..8.71…………………9.25……………………..0.54
So the current group still has a half point on what is as good a top 11 as you’re likely to find at any one time. No one has emerged as the true leader of this pack. But it is the best overall pack that I’ve found in my comparison.
You seem to know where the data is and how it should be compared. I look forward to your analysis and point of view.
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