Sybase Match Play - Predictions

by hound dog on May 19, 2010 4:58 AM PDT Comment 14 comments

Match play tournaments map out just like the NCAA basketball tournament - you can print out a Sybase Bracket and pick the winners. Just like I did three years ago, I'll steer away from my standard format and try to guess the winners of all 63 matches. I've picked the higher seed to win in each of the first two rounds with these exceptions:

Round One:

Azahara Munoz over Se Ri Pak

Janice Moodie over Eun-Hee Ji

Karen Stupples over Sun Young Yoo

Vicky Hurst over Momoko Ueda

Amanda Blumenherst over Stacy Lewis

Christina Kim over Jee Young Lee

Round Two:

Janice Moodie over Na Yeon Choi

Maria Hjorth over Inbee Park

Karen Stupples over Cristie Kerr

Vicky Hurst over Song-Hee Kim

Amanda Blumenherst over Karrie Webb

Brittany Lang over Angela Stanford

Christina Kim over Anna Nordqvist

Katherine Hull over In-Kyung Kim

My picks for the rest of way are:

Round Three:

Brittany Lincicome over Jiyai Shin

Michelle Wie over Janice Moodie

Yani Tseng over Maria Hjorth

Karen Stupples over Vicky Hurst

Ai Miyazato over Catriona Matthew

Amanda Blumenherst over Brittany Lang

Morgan Pressel over Suzann Pettersen

Christina Kim over Katherine Hull

Quarterfinals:

Michelle Wie over Brittany Lincicome

Yani Tseng over Karen Stupples

Ai Miyazato over Amanda Blumenherst

Christina Kim over Morgan Pressel

Semi-Finals:

Michelle Wie over Yani Tseng

Ai Miyazato over Christina Kim

Final:

Michelle Wie over Ai Miyazato

Suzann Pettersen was the unluckiest of the high seeds. At #3 she drew #35 Juli Inkster in the first round, an outstanding match-player who was the third-toughest player Suzann could have drawn (according to Rolex). It appears to me that the Whitworth bracket is the toughest with Wie, Lincicome or Shin being good choices to get through it, and Choi and Moodie being dark-horses. I think Miyazato's toughest opponent might be Catriona Matthew - if she can get through Round Three, I see Ai making it to the final. Christina Kim is my designated Cinderella - a great match-player in a less-than-stellar bracket (after Pettersen, Nordqvist and maybe In-Kyung Kim or Pressel, anyway).

Good luck with your bracket, and I do mean "good luck". While filling it out, keep this in mind - when Seon Hwa Lee won the 2007 Match Play title, she was seeded 22^nd by virtue of her Rolex Ranking - which made her the highest-seeded player to ever win it. Lincicome was the 39^th seed in 2006 and Marisa Baena was 60^thin 2005. So I'm actually going out on a limb in the opposite direction by picking the #8 seed to win it all!

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this is gonna be fun!

We go in almost completely different directions starting in Round 2! (And even earlier in a few big ones!!)

by The Constructivist on May 19, 2010 5:54 AM PDT reply actions

I noticed that Hounddog has Ji Yai Shin as the only Korean in final 16 and none in the final 8. This is a significant difference from the typical LPGA leaderboard. Is there a particular reason that their game is not well suited for match play competition?

by sports medic on May 19, 2010 8:42 AM PDT reply actions

If Seon Hwa Lee was in the field, I probably would have put her in the finals because of her match-play record. I was trying to factor in a reasonable amount of upsets and my picks just came out that way. You probably think NY Choi is going a lot farther than Round Two but Moodie has a great match play record and is playing pretty well right now. Inky’s not playing particularly well and I was just playing a hunch on Vicky Hurst beating Song-Hee in Round Two. Pak is too inconsistent and if I didn’t have Munoz knocking her out in the first round I would surely have picked LIncicome to do it. No intentional bias here, I promise.

by hound dog on May 20, 2010 4:42 AM PDT up reply actions

Pak has a very difficult 1st round draw with Munoz.

Munoz has shown the ability to go low, especially on the first day. I think Lincicome has confidence in her game and is certainly capable of beating Ji Yai Shin.. Christina Kim does well in match play events but she hasn’t been playing well lately and I don’t know if she can just flip the switch, especially with all the distractions of her book release. I agree that In Kyung Kim is not playing well. Neither is Maria Hjorth and Vicky Hurst. I don’t see them beating In Bee Park and Song Hee Kim who has been playing at a consistantly high level. I would be surprised if she didn’t make it to the quarter finals.

Like March Madness, sometimes when you finish your bracket you look back and see that you have 3 teams from the Big East in the Final Four or no teams from the Big 12 in the Elite 8. Golf is even harder to predict than college basketball. Between NYC, SH Kim In Bee Park and Jiyai Shin you figeure at least one of them is capable of making a deep run. Predicting which one is the difficult part. I just looked at the bracket and saw a pattern that I didn’t expect, dont usually see, and just wondered why. Knowing that you follow it much more closely than I do, I was just wondering if it was a matter of driving distance or the course not suiting their game or a lack of match play experience that was the issue. Or maybe you are just picking the opposite of TC.

Like I said before, if you are correct, the Golf Channel will be very pleased this weekend.

by sports medic on May 20, 2010 8:06 AM PDT up reply actions

one other thing I didn't mention

I might have tweaked these picks here and there with a little more time to mull them over. Didn’t get a bracket until late Tuesday and I wanted to post about it Wednesday morning.

Lee dispatches Kim 4&2. My bracket takes a big early hit.

by hound dog on May 20, 2010 10:37 AM PDT up reply actions

TC's bracket takes a bigger hit...

with Karine Icher defeating his projected winner Na Yeon Choi.

by sports medic on May 20, 2010 1:44 PM PDT up reply actions

OUCH

But I only lost 3 of my sweet 16:

http://mlyhlss.blogspot.com/2010/05/sybase-match-play-championship-thursday.html

by The Constructivist on May 20, 2010 3:57 PM PDT up reply actions

better to go with your gut in match-play picks, I think

I did zero research for this. Didn’t even look at Hamilton Farm’s layout or any performance stats of anyone. Just my sense of who’s playing consistently well and who might get a little spark from the head-to-head format….

by The Constructivist on May 20, 2010 3:58 PM PDT up reply actions

And TC is going “all in” with the Asians. Either J Golf or The Golf Channel is going to be extremely disappointed this weekend.

by sports medic on May 19, 2010 9:06 AM PDT reply actions

heh

Well, you look at who’s hot (NY Choi, SH Kim, A Miyazato, I Park, JY Shin…) and not injured (a la Pettersen, Gulbis…), plus the fact that JY Lee has a great match-play record and many other Koreans have head-to-head team/individual not-quite-match-play experience in the Pinx/Kyoraku Cup….

by The Constructivist on May 19, 2010 12:05 PM PDT reply actions

I think you're all underestimating Se Ri...

especially after this weekend. I don’t know what kind of match play record she has, but I like a gal with a 6-0 playoff record! ;-)

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