CN Canadian Women’s Open Preview

The LPGA makes its annual trek - each year since 1966 - north of the border this week for the CN Canadian Women's Open.  St. Charles Country Club in Winnipeg will host its first Tour event since the 1992 du Maurier Classic.  Suzann Pettersen won last year's Open by five strokes at Priddis Greens Golf & Country Club near Calgary.

St. Charles is a 27-hole facility and will use its Mackenzie North Course as the front nine and its Ross South Course for the back.  Each nine plays to par of 36, with a total of four par-5s and four par-3s.  The only "reachable" par-4 appears to be #3, which is listed at 294 yards.  All of this info comes courtesy of the Open's media guide - more events should make a document like this available.  They even have the prize money breakdown list.

Apparently some of the rights conflicts that Golf Channel had with CBC last year have been resolved, since we will be getting live coverage in the U.S. on Saturday and Sunday.  Still have to put up with the overnight tape-delay for the first two rounds but this is certainly an improvement.

As usual per the slimmed-down 2010 schedule, the strength of the field is excellent.  Of the 16 events including the Canadian Open, 14 have had a Field Score of 81 or better (13 have been 87 or better) with only Tres Marias and the Jamie Farr coming up short.  What's more, their scores of 66 and 62 would have been among the average ones during the 2008 season.  We also have more of the rank-and-file in attendance so the cutoff point is much higher than it was at Safeway.  Of course, the 16 sponsor's exemptions CN handed down have something to do with that as well.  One of those exemptions went to Lexi Thompson so we'll see if she can extend the run of success she enjoyed at the U.S. Open and Evian.

NYC didn't win Safeway for me but my picks overall were much better and I registered my best finish of 2010 in the PakPicker contest - second place!!  The Top 5 finishers were all in my first six picks - what does a guy have to do to win one of those things, anyway?  Since my latest recipe for prognostication worked so well, I'll give it another whirl.