Top 70 - 2010 Final

As I stated on Sunday, Yani Tseng is the 2010 Hound Dog Player of the Year but the race wound up just as close as the Rolex one.  Only nine points separated first place from fifth.  The third column is their previous ranking, players in bold are rookies, the ones in italics are non-members of the LPGA and notes on the rankings follow the jump.

In four of the five categories which I use to rate players, Cristie Kerr rates higher than Yani Tseng.  The difference maker was the one extra major championship Yani brought home.  If you count major wins as equal to two regular wins (which my system does), Tseng and Ai Miyazato rate even.  Yani beats Ai on the money list and the cut list (only one to Ai's two) while they are virtually even in scoring and Top 10 percentage.  Like Kerr, Jiyai Shin beats Tseng in four of the five categories but has an even larger deficit in the "win" column.  The moral of the story - it's hard for people to take POY away from you when you have two majors in hand.

The players in the twenties were hard to line up, due to the limited schedules of Lexi Thompson, Hee Kyung Seo and Lorena Ochoa.  All three showed enough in their small samples to prove they belong near that level.  If you reckon any of them should be moved half-a-dozen positions either way, you'd probably have a good case.

Jimin Kang and Katherine Hull made sizeable moves forward because of their late-season victories.  Mika Miyazato didn't win but she jumps into the Top 20 thanks to three Top 5s and only one finish outside the Top 20 in her last seven starts.  Maria Hjorth did not make the Top 30 primarily because of her nine missed cuts and Beatriz Recari's ten MCs and low scoring average keep her out of the Top 40.  Despite Recari's win, it's difficult to regard the 2010 rookie class as anything more than a disappointment.  After five straight seasons of rookie classes that rank among the top eleven all-time, 2010's edition with one player in the Top 40 (and #28 at that) stands out like a sore thumb.