Big Three Stats Update

It's taken a while but now that we have completed 12 events (nine of them with the stats collected), it's time to give you the 2010 leaders in the three statistics that I feel best show each player's strengths and weaknesses.  For the uninitiated, those statistics are Greens In Regulation, which comes straight from LPGA.com, and two numbers of my own making - Total Driving, which combines driving distance and accuracy, and Total Putting, which combines putts per GIR and putting average.  I've listed the Top 20 in each category below but have also attached a spreadsheet which shows the ranking of all eligible players.

Big Three Stats - July 2010

You might expect the best players to rate well in all three categories, and quite a few of them do.  Cristie Kerr is #1 in putting, #5 in GIR and #7 in driving.  Song-Hee Kim is the only other player to rank in the Top 20 of all three - #2 in GIR, #8 in putting and #16 in driving.  Several players are in the Top 20 of both driving and GIR.  Suzann Pettersen, Karrie Webb, Michelle Wie, Hee Young Park, Stacy Lewis and Karen Stupples may not surprise you by being there but I'll bet you didn't expect Gwladys Nocera, Karin Sjodin or Sarah Jane Smith to be on both lists.  Yani Tseng and Morgan Pressel rate well in both driving and putting while Na Yeon Choi, Anna Nordqvist and Inbee Park rate well in GIR and putting.

You might have noticed that Ai Miyazato ranks 19^th in putting and isn't listed among the other two (she's 38^th in driving and a measly 116^th in GIR).  Of all the players on Tour, these numbers are slanted against Ai more than anybody.  For there have been three events that the Tour did not collect the stats for which these lists are based - Thailand, HSBC and Tres Marias - and Miyazato won all three.  She'll be lagging behind in these numbers all year thanks to that anomaly.