State Farm Classic - Epilogue

A busy family weekend prevented me from viewing any coverage so apologies for the lack of recaps and this meager epilogue.

Yani Tseng's three-shot victory was her second LPGA win of 2011, her fifth worldwide this year and the seventh of her Tour career (now in its fourth season).  At age 22, Yani now has eleven Hall Of Fame points - seven wins, three of them majors, plus her Rolex Player of the Year award for 2010.  With only Laura Davies and Cristie Kerr ahead of her on the active list of players not yet qualified, Tseng has the best chance of any active player to reach the pinnacle of her profession.

Consider her point total in light of how many times Yani has not been able to hold on to a final round lead (as I documented in a recent post).  Yesterday was just the third time in eight attempts that Tseng entered the final round leading or tied and managed to win the tournament.  This still-less-than-stellar record has now become a little misleading, though.  All three of Yani's "Holds" have come in her last four tries so it appears she has addressed that problem.

State Farm's average score of 71.47 was the lowest of the year by nearly 1.4 strokes (Thailand 72.85) but was within the normal range of past events at Panther Creek.  While Tseng's -21 was not an event record, here are several other numbers which give an indication of how good the scoring conditions were:  22 players finished double-digits under par, 14 players who shot even par the first two days missed the cut and 10 players who made the cut finished over par.

Picking a Big Surprise in recent weeks has been difficult because the upper echelon players have really been packing the Top 10 in each event and the few places remaining keep going to players who have had good finishes lately, like Mindy Kim this week.  Wendy Ward has been a pretty good player for so long that it's hard to consider her seventh-place finish a surprise, but it was her first Top 10 of the year and only her second since May 2009.  Selecting Wendy as the Big Surprise is actually the easiest choice I've had for awhile.

The Big Disappointment goes to a player whom I have yet to figure out.  From her recent play plus a feeling that her good putting would serve her well at Panther Creek, I felt Anna Nordqvist would challenge this week.  She missed the cut by three shots.  Anna has collected 15 Top 10s over the last two-plus years and I've never expected any of them.  The few times I've thought she would play well has never coincided with any of those weeks.  The circumstances which allow Nordqvist to contend can probably be found in the records but I obviously haven't been able to dig them up yet.