I've already listed my Preseason Top 30, predicting how the best players on Tour will fare this season.  Now it's time to make some real predictions.  Why?  So we can all look back at them and have a good laugh this fall.

Seriously, I've come up with a few things that I believe you're going to see this LPGA season.  If you have predictions of your own, post them in the Comments and I'll add them to the list if they seem to warrant it.  Here goes...

No player will win more than three times but at least five players will win at least twice.

Last year Lorena Ochoa and Jiyai Shin led the Tour with three wins while Anna Nordqvist and Na Yeon Choi were the only others to win more than once.  With two fewer events on the schedule (as of this writing) I expect the first part of this prediction to come true.  It's the continually narrowing gap between the top 8-12 players that causes me to expect the second part.

No more than 15 different players will win an event this year.

Last year featured 20 different champions in 27 events.  With fewer events and the expectation of more multiple winners, I have to predict that no more than 15 players will win.  Another factor which may reduce the number of winners - fewer tournaments means a higher concentration of the best players will be playing every week, so the stronger fields should make it more difficult for a lesser player to break through.

The trend of first-time major champions will continue.

Did you know that the last seven majors have been won by first-timers?  Lorena Ochoa's win at the 2008 Kraft Nabisco was her second major championship, both them coming back-to-back.  Ochoa's '07 British win was the fourth straight by a first-time major champion so that makes eleven out of the last twelve.  The LPGA had gone eleven seasons without having all four majors being won by "rookies" but now has seen that happen in two of the last three.

With more major champions now in the mix, doesn't that make it harder for the streak to continue?  Sure, but look at the list of those who still don't have one - Paula Creamer, Ai Miyazato, Na Yeon Choi, Angela Stanford, Michelle Wie, In-Kyung Kim, Song-Hee Kim...and those are only the ones ranked in my 2009 final 15.  None of last year's four winners were in my Top 15 the week they won.  Chances are, one of this year's majors will be won by a player who already owns a major title.  But I wouldn't be surprised if the other three of them are won by first-timers.  Now on a related subject...

The U.S. Open jinx will continue.

Seven years of precedence is too much to ignore.  I do believe that Eun-Hee Ji will recover from it - the only question is when.

The overall Tour scoring average will be even better than it was last year.

Despite the new groove regulations, I predict that last year's 72.73 average (which was the lowest I have on record dating back to the 2004 season) will be improved upon in 2010.  Reasons?  The afore-mentioned higher concentration of the best players playing every week, the decrease in full-field events, the subtraction of a handful of higher-scoring events (SBS, MasterCard and for now, Korea) plus the fact that most of the returning events will be on the same courses they were the last time around (U.S., British and Canadian Opens aside).  Oh yeah, swap Bulle Rock for Locust Hill at the Wegmans LPGA Championship - that's been good for about a half-stroke for most of the last six years.  Given some good luck with the weather, 2010's average could crack 72.50.

Now for some predictions which are slightly less grounded in statistical analysis...

Grace, Angela and Jane Park will all make at least 15 starts this year and will all collect at least one Top 10.  I left Gloria Park out of this prediction because I'm not sure she'll make 15 starts.

This year's player who will return from maternity leave with the biggest surprise performance will be Mi Hyun Kim.

At some point prior to the beginning of the U.S. Open, at least one golf scribe will write that the LPGA is boring because either 1) so-and-so is dominating the Tour so the rest of the players suck, or 2) no one player is dominating the Tour so they all suck.  I get double-points on this prediction if that same article mentions that Paula Creamer has never won a major.

Paula Creamer and Michelle Wie will be among the 2010 first-time major champions.