LPGA Tour Championship Preview

The LPGA's 24^th and final tournament of 2010 is this week's LPGA Tour Championship.  Grand Cypress Golf Club in Orlando is the site so the Golf Channel crew doesn't have far to travel to provide coverage for the four days.  Anna Nordqvist won last year's rain-delayed inaugural in Houston by two strokes over Lorena Ochoa.

UPDATE:  I neglected to mention that in addition to the second-round cut to 70 plus ties, there will also be a cut following Saturday's round to the Top 30 plus ties.  This wrinkle could make the Vare Trophy race a little more complicated should Choi and/or Kerr miss either cut.  I''ll be keeping a close watch on this throughout the weekend.

For being the season's finale, a surprising number of players are not in attendance.  Michelle Wie is out because of her back issues (not to mention it's finals week at Stanford) while Inbee Park, Jee Young Lee and Karrie Webb also aren't here.  The Field Score of 76 isn't exactly what the LPGA wanted for its self-run season-ender.  Many of the missing are at the JLPGA Q-School Finals (The Constructivist has the details).  Fortunately, the plethora of races to be settled this weekend should override any perceived field weakness.  Rolex Player of the Year, the Vare Trophy and the money list championship will be settled along with the various races for 2011 status.  Since the Monday morning update of my Quest For The Card post, two more players (Aree Song and a non-bubble player I can't ascertain) have pulled out and allowed Nicole Jeray and Michelle Ellis one more chance to make the Top 125.  I haven't been plugging it but the HD Player of the Year race is still in doubt too - Yani Tseng leads but Ai Miyazato, Jiyai Shin and Cristie Kerr could steal it with a win.

There are an unusual number of unknowns about this tournament which make it particularly difficult to handicap.  The course, while I would guess most of the Florida-based players have seen it before, hasn't been used in Tour competition since the YourLife Vitamins Classic in January 2001 (FYI - Se Ri Pak won that event).  For that same reason, you can't factor in last year's results.  The layout, while a little longer than average, can't really be labeled as Long.  The recent two-week break makes my Hot 20 list somewhat less pertinent.  We've already spelled out which players have the biggest incentives so we might as well write their names on a sheet of paper and throw darts at it.