P&G NW Arkansas Championship Preview

For the third time, the ladies travel to Rogers, Arkansas (a few miles north of Fayetteville, home of Stacy Lewis' Razorbacks) for the P&G NW Arkansas Championship Presented by Walmart.  It's about time Walmart became associated with this event, don't you think?  Pinnacle Country Club again serves as host.  Jiyai Shin defeated Angela Stanford and Sun Young Yoo on the second playoff hole to win here a year ago.

Pinnacle Country Club is one of the shorter tracks on Tour and the lower-than-average scores registered here reflect that.  The 2008 number was very low due to lift-clean-place rules being utilized that week (a rainy weekend made it tough to get all 54 holes in) so last year's number is probably more indicative of Pinnacle's normal play.  18 is a par-5, which as I've said before I really like due to the drama it can add to Sunday's waning moments.  This played out vividly last year as Angela Stanford eagled the last hole to get into the playoff while Shi Hyun Ahn parred it to miss by one.

It's another strong field - albeit minus Paula Creamer - but the real reason the cutoff point is higher than usual is because the field size is back to the standard 144 (several summer events raised it to 150).  I don't remember a full-field event where Player #150 got shutout like Stephanie Louden did this week.  And it makes no sense why Futures Tour champ Cindy LaCrosse had to Monday qualify when she had just won her third FT event of the season.  This accomplishment is supposed to earn an immediate promotion to Category-13 which would have placed Cindy at Position #145.  Actually I DO have a couple of ideas how this could happen - either nobody remembered to tell her between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning that qualifying for Arkansas was unnecessary or nobody remembered that she earned that position.  My money is on the latter.