Sybase Match Play Championship Preview

For the first time in three seasons, the official LPGA schedule presents a match play event.  Seon Hwa Lee won the HSBC Match Play Championship at Wykagyl Country Club in July 2007, beating Ai Miyazato 2&1 in the final.  Hamilton Farm was the host of the HSBC event in 2005 and 2006 (Marisa Baena and Brittany Lincicome won those two events).

If you saw the Sunday matches at the Solheim Cup last August, you already know how singles match play works.  But in case you didn't....  Each match pits two players head-to-head with each hole as its own competition.  It doesn't matter how many strokes you take throughout the round - just win holes, baby.  Win the most holes and you win the match.  In this event, the 64 participants are drawn into four groups named for the players with the most career victories in LPGA history - Kathy Whitworth, Mickey Wright, Annika Sorenstam and Patty Berg.  Single rounds on Thursday and Friday will cut the field to 16, two rounds on Saturday will cut it to four, and the semi-finals and finals will be played Sunday.  The final two players could conceivably play more than 72 holes over the last two days, should each round go to the end and any extra holes be needed.

Players qualified for the field by either 1) ranking in the Top 48 of the final 2009 LPGA money list, 2) playing well in the first two rounds of last week's Bell Micro Classic, or 3) ranking highly on the 2010 money list after completion of the Bell Micro.  The two sponsor's exemptions were given to Laura Diaz and Beatriz Recari.  Via the first criteria, five extra players made the field because Lorena Ochoa, Paula Creamer, Lindsey Wright, Seon Hwa Lee and Helen Alfredsson are absent.  FYI, Lee has recently been playing JLPGA events and Alfredsson finished T5 on the LET last week.  Wright has apparently been inactive since missing the Kraft Nabisco cut - no word on any injury.

The first-round pairings will be announced at 3pm Tuesday.  When I get those, I'll fill out my bracket and post my picks then.

UPDATE:  This paragraph from today's write-up at LPGA.com explains the pairings process in better detail:

The 64 players in the field will be given a number from 1-64 based on their Rolex Rankings. The top-32 players will be automatically seeded into the brackets. Their opponents will be determined through a blind draw.