Lorena Ochoa Invitational - Epilogue

In-Kyung Kim waited until the next-to-last event of 2010 to extend her consecutive-season winning streak to three.  Strangely enough, the victory didn't move her up the money list - she was in eighth place last week and is still there today, $63,000 behind #7 Song-Hee Kim.  In another money-list oddity for this time of year, Brittany Lincicome moved up a spot to #14.  She passed the idle Sun Young Yoo even though she finished 34^th in the 36-player field, earning $8286 for her efforts.

The Rolex Player of the Year points race got even tighter.  All five players who were in the hunt coming in are still there, mainly because Yani Tseng finished outside the Top 10 (27^th to be exact).  Ai Miyazato picked up five points for finishing sixth and is now nine points behind.  Na Yeon Choi's T7 added four points to her total, bringing her to within 14.  Cristie Kerr made the most headway, picking up seven points with her T4 and is now 15 behind Tseng.  Despite not playing, Jiyai Shin remains 18 behind the leader.  JNT tried to pre-empt it in the comments ;) but I'll document all of the possible scenarios in a separate post.

Miyazato would have been even closer in the POY race had she not inexplicably played 4 through 6 yesterday in +4.  Merely playing those three holes in even par would have garnered an extra seven points.

The scoring average of 70.76 at the Ochoa Invitational was the lowest of any event this year, narrowly beating out the 70.78 of State Farm and the 70.79 of last week's Mizuno Classic.  23 of the 36 participants finished under par and 14 of them were in double-digits.  Given that information, it is rather surprising that Kim was the only player to score in the 60s all four days (five players registered 70 as their worst round of the week).

Sophia Sheridan is amazing.  She finished T28 yesterday.  She also finished T28 in this elite event last year and solo 27^th in 2008.  It must be nice to be able to depend on that $9900 check coming in every November!

Suzann Pettersen was the only player to respond in any way to the I.K. front-nine volley yesterday so she got the lion's share of attention in my recap.  Choi, Paula Creamer and Karine Icher were all trailing by four and tied with Suzann as the final group entered the back nine but NYC was just about out of holes (and played them in +1 to boot), Paula managed only one birdie over the final nine and Karine's only positive was an eagle at 18 after the outcome was decided.

Picking a Big Surprise out of an elite field is always tough and trying to do it this week is exceptionally difficult.  So I abstain.  The Big Disappointment goes to Yani Tseng, who not only finished 27^th, she didn't break 70 all week.  She's still in good shape to win Player of the Year but a similar performance at the Tour Championship might cost her dearly.