Top 70 - August 2010

Only two events have passed since my last rankings but with a two-week gap before our next tournament...what the hey.  2010 statistics now count for 70% of the ratings.  The players in bold are rookies and the players in italics are non-members of the LPGA.  As usual, notes are after the jump.

As I mentioned in my British Open epilogue, the top four players are very close together and the next three aren't too far off in the distance.  If you thought last year's Player of the Year race was a good one, this year's might put it to shame.  A victory by anybody in the top twelve would either move them to the top of the heap or put them in the middle of the POY hunt.

This month's biggest changes are the inclusion of Hee Kyung Seo and Lexi Thompson.  Seo made her fifth LPGA start at Royal Birkdale and collected her second Top 10.  She would be 17^th on the money list if she were a member.  I could have placed her in the Top 70 each of the last two months but her small number of starts plus a lack of good finishes other than the Kia Classic win prompted me to leave her out.  This month I've added Seo to the list exactly where my system rates her, at #26.  Thompson is a slightly different story.  With three starts on the year, Lexi has two Top 10s, a missed cut and would rank 18^th on the money list.  My system ranks her #23 but I pushed her down twelve spots because of the small sample size.  With two or three more starts, I'll leave her where the system places her.

Morgan Pressel has been on the move lately.  After camping out in the 20-35 range for the better part of two years, Morgan was #18 in April and May, #15 in July and now up to #12.  Five Top 10s in her last eight starts with no finishes worse than T34 since early May are the reasons for the upswing.  Coming soon in another post, I'll focus on some others who have been moving up or down in recent months.