Futures Tour Finale
by hound dog on Sep 2, 2010 6:19 AM PDT
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PrintThere's no LPGA action this holiday weekend but the Duramed Futures Tour holds its final event of the season, the Price Chopper Tour Championship in Albany, New York. The DFT website will be streaming live video from the 1st tee and the 18th green all three days of the tournament and will provide real-time scoring updates.
At the conclusion of play Sunday, the top five players on the DFT money list will receive Category-9 status for the 2011 season (approx. Positions #95-100) while players 6-10 will receive Category-17 status (approx. Positions #235-240). Cindy LaCrosse and Christine Song are locks for the Top 5 and by my reckoning Gerina Mendoza is in great shape. Three players would have to pass her and I see only a few scenarios where that could happen given the expected prize money for first, second and third. For one, Jennifer Song and Jenny Shin would have to finish well enough to pass her and one of the other half-dozen players directly behind Mendoza would have to win for Gerina to be knocked out. Jennifer and Jenny have a little more to worry about, but each has a several thousand dollar lead on sixth-place Angela Oh.
Assuming at least a $16,000 payout for the winner, everyone down to #22 Jenny Gleason still has a shot at finishing Top 10 and everyone down to #11 Esther Choe has a chance to make the Top 5. Good luck this weekend, ladies!
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HD, do you reckon...
the LPGA will ever start giving out more Tour cards to the Futures Tour players? You would think they would want to encourage that route, since the players get more experience that way.
Mike Southern
www.ruthlessgolf.com
it's likely
They started giving the 6-10s cards a couple of years ago. If I were making this call, I would give the 6-10 Futures Tour cards status ahead of at least the Q-School 21-30s and probably ahead of the Tournament winner in Cat-15a. They should let the 11-15 FT finishers slot in where the 6-10s are now. Those changes would boost the FT carrot and wouldn’t diminish Q-School too much.
When the LPGA decided to increase the total cards given to include numbers 6-10 on the FUTURES Tour, they made the announcement at the card presentation ceremony following the final event that year (2008?). I sort of expected Mike Whan would be on hand in Albany yesterday to make an announcement at least similar to HD’s proposal. I’m a little disappointed he didn’t.
"(I)f you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated." Saul Alinsky
I estimated Gerina was at least a 15-1 favorite to remain in the Top 5
Someone on GolfWRX asked me about it in the Big Break thread last week. Your summary is very similar to what I wrote. For one thing, Gerina is only in jeopardy from 4-10. #11 would finish $3 behind Gerina even if she won while Gerina missed the cut.
I feel pretty good about isolating Gerina because The Constructivist put together a very impressive Futures Tour preview early this year with a money list projection. The only thing I seriously disagreed with was his low slotting of Gerina, something like #30. I posted in a comment that I would go much higher on Gerina. I had read that Gerina planned to concentrate solely on the Futures Tour, even though she lad some LPGA status. She was #8 in scoring average last year. Her strength on par 5s should translate well to the LPGA.
Jennifer Song played only half a season on Duramed. That really benefited the players atop the list.
I thought Michael Whan might tinker with the Futures Tour cards, as Mike Southern posted above, perhaps allowing full status to 1-10 instead of 1-5. The lack of any change has been among the biggest surprises of his tenure so far, from my standpoint. The Futures Tour depth has improved, as evidenced by the scoring averages near the top. #15 this year is 71.3.
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