The 2011 season draws to a close with the playing of the inaugural Titleholders.  Each event on the schedule qualified three players for the field to generate a gathering of the best players on Tour this year.

As the final event of 2011, the Titleholders is the last chance for several prominent players to collect their first victory of the year.  Most notable of that group is Cristie Kerr, who despite having been one of the top players on Tour, is still winless.  Kerr has had at least one victory in each of the last seven seasons but hasn't been able to convert any of her six Top 3 finishes into a win.  Other high-profile players who haven't yet won in 2011 include Paula Creamer, Angela Stanford, In-Kyung Kim and (the unfortunately absent-so-she-can't-win-this-week-either) Jiyai Shin.

Back in January, I wrote how the qualifying format for this event was a roundabout way of merely selecting the Top 45 or so players.  As expected, three players who merely had to finish the Ochoa Invitational made this field - Juli Inkster (who certainly deserves to be here), Natalie Gulbis and Beatriz Recari.  Gulbis made the Ochoa field on a sponsor's invite - certainly not the most well-earned of paths - but her inclusion here doesn't exactly rip anybody off.  According to my current rankings, the highest ranked players not invited were #47 Eun-Hee Ji and #54 Kristy McPherson.  Ji's best finish was T20 at ShopRite, which was much too early in the season for that finish to have qualified.  She registered a T25 in Korea and got beat out by Shanshan Feng (T13), a much more deserving player.  McPherson followed a similar trail - T18 at Kia and T24 at Safeway were nowhere near good enough.  Players with only one Top 20 finish (and just barely that) on the season have no reason to complain about being left out.

Despite missing seven of the 66 qualifiers, the field is still very strong.  All of my current Top 10 and 35 of my Top 40 are playing.  It should be a good one to close out the season.

All of this week's 20 have qualified to play in the inaugural Titleholders.

Catriona Matthew's victory was the fourth of her 17-year LPGA career and her first since the 2009 British Open.  Partly because of her constant presence on Europe's Solheim team, I always get a little underwhelmed when I start looking at Matthew's career numbers.  At second glance however, when you notice that she's only once failed to clear a quarter-million dollars earned since 1998 (and that was 2006, the year she missed time giving birth to her first child) and that she's collected 87 Top 10 finishes, you realize she's carved out one fine career.

Catriona was never really pushed on Sunday.  She started the final round three shots ahead of Suzann Pettersen, which is not-at-all a secure position.  But Matthew birdied the first two holes to take a five-shot lead and Pettersen went on to bogey 5, falling six back.  Suzann birdied not a single hole on the day and finished in solo seventh.  In-Kyung Kim and Anna Nordqvist started four shots back but neither was able to birdie on the front nine.  After birdies at 6 and 9, Matthew was -15 and leading by eight shots.  She played the back nine in 39 (three bogeys and no birdies), allowing Nordqvist to draw within three but Anna bogeyed the last two and Catriona won by four.

Sophia Sheridan one-upped herself this year.  She finished T25 +5, ahead of such luminaries as Stacy Lewis, Amy Yang, Angela Stanford and Hee Young Park and one shot better than her usual Ochoa Invitational finish of 27-28.

None of the lesser players in this elite field stood out so I'll pass on awarding a Big Surprise.  I will give a Shout-Out to Juli Inkster (T4 and co-leader after each of the first two rounds), who once again reminded us she could still possibly win on this Tour.  I'm going to award this week's Big Disappointment to Yani Tseng - not because I'm that disappointed in her T19 finish (but +3?  Really, Yani?), but because she had convinced me that her recent great play was plenty enough to override her prior lesser results on a given course.  For that breach of my newly-rewarded confidence, I'm very disappointed. 

The fourth-annual Lorena Ochoa Invitational will, for the first time, not feature Lorena Ochoa in action.  Being eight months pregnant, Lorena must not be physically able to walk the 72 holes.  It's her tournament, guys - give her a cart to ride in and watch her finish in the Top 20!

As an invitational, the LOI has a fine field but the absence of a handful of the upper-echelon lowers the Field Score a bit.  Na Yeon Choi is the hottest player missing while Karrie Webb and Jiyai Shin are the other big-name players not making the trip.  Beyond them however, the turnout is solid.  Defending champion In-Kyung Kim has had a decent 2011 but once again she comes down to the season's penultimate event still looking to extend her consecutive season win streak (currently three).  She'll have to beat out Yani Tseng to do that and not too many have succeeded lately in that respect.  Tseng finished 27^th here last year but we've seen "on-this-course" history not apply to Yani a lot this year.

Like all events, they hand out a few sponsor's invites (four this year) so Natalie Gulbis and local talents Lili Alvarez and Regina Plasencia will be playing.  As she has in all three prior Invitationals, Sophia Sheridan gets a sponsor's invite so she can grind out another $10,000 payday.  It's uncanny, I'm telling you - Sheridan's finishes here have been 27^th, T28 and T28.

Four Five players - most notably Na Yeon Choi and Jiyai Shin - of this week's Hot 20 are not in the field.

Momoko Ueda's first victory at the 2007 Mizuno Classic (has it really been four years?) gave her the opportunity to play full-time on the LPGA Tour.  She hasn't yet been an upper-echelon player (before this weekend, only seven Top 10 finishes in 69 starts since the beginning of 2008) though she reached #14 in my March 2008 rankings and #23 in April 2010.  2011 had not been kind as Momoko's best finish had been T18 in Thailand and she had only five Top 40 finishes in 15 starts coming into Mizuno.  Does this win signify a turnaround?  She'll need to follow this up with another Top 10 or two for me to answer "yes".

Ueda started the final round with a three-shot lead over Sakura Yokomine.  By the end of the front nine, her lead had dwindled to one over Yokomine and Shanshan Feng.  Na Yeon Choi was on fire (-7 on the day, -14 overall through 14) and joined the pursuit.  Momoko birdied 10 to reach -15.  Choi took a critical bogey at 15 but birdied the last two to take the clubhouse lead at -15.  Feng birdied 12 and 13 to tie for the lead.  Yokomine birdied 13 to pull within one.  At 16, Ueda birdied to take a one-shot lead over Feng and Choi.  Feng birdied 17 to tie again at -16.  Yokomine bogeyed the final two holes to finish tied for sixth.  Feng and Ueda parred out to go to a playoff.  Momoko had five feet to win on the first hole but missed on the left edge.  Neither player had a reasonable chance on the second hole but on the third attempt (all at 18), Ueda drained a 15-footer for birdie and the victory.

It was another low-scoring affair typical of Mizuno's past history.  The average of 70.46 was the lowest for this event since the 2005 edition and the lowest of 2011 by more than one stroke (State Farm 71.47).  Only one player on Friday shot worse than 74 (think about that for a minute) and just eight of the 78 players finished over par.

The JLPGA contingent got off to a great start this week with two players sharing the lead after Round One and seven others starting in the Top 20.  By Sunday afternoon, only Yokomine and Esther Lee managed to make the Top 10 as the relatively thin LPGA group rose up to claim the entire Top 5. Teresa Lu shared fourth place with Catriona Matthew, grabbing her best finish of 2011 by far.  In only two starts this year, Teresa had yet to make the cut.  This was her best finish since a tie for third at the 2008 Ginn Open and her first Top 10 since tying for eighth at last year's Safeway.  Normally that would be plenty good enough to win the Big Surprise Award but I have to select Ueda for that honor.

The Big Disappointment is unfortunately an easy choice.  Ai Miyazato failed to break par any of the three days and finished 77^th in a 78-player field. 

The Asian Swing's final stop is also its oldest, as this year's Mizuno Classic marks the 39^th consecutive year that the LPGA has visited Japan.  For the sixth time, Kintetsu Kashikojima Country Club is the venue.  Expect the scores to be low as only one Mizuno event since 2004 has failed to average under par (2007).  The average score for the winner of this 54-hole tournament over that stretch has been nearly -17.  One oddity I found among the past results - no American has won Mizuno since Betsy King did it back-to-back in 1992 and '93.  Annika Sorenstam's five straight wins here was the reason for a good part of that drought but the fact did surprise me.

Can you believe that Jiyai Shin's victory here last year is the last time she's won?  At the time, she had just nosed out Paula Creamer for the lead in the category of Young Player Most Likely To Reach The Hall Of Fame.  The Tseng Blitz of the last 12 months has relegated Jiyai and Paula to second and third chairs, I'd say.

If you dislike my tendency in previews to focus on players not in attendance, you'd probably better stop reading now.  The Field Score of 43 is the lowest since last year's CVS.  The two events have a lot in common.  CVS was the weekend prior to the start of 2010's fall Asian Swing while Mizuno, being at the end of this year's Swing, is the weekend prior to the Ochoa Invitational.  In both cases, many players passed to get a head start on the long travel.  In Mizuno's case, it was even worse because last week's open date gave players even more reason to head home early.  Hopefully the commonalities end there as the CVS did not survive to 2011.  Only three of my Top 10 players are here (Stacy Lewis, Na Yeon Choi, Karrie Webb) and only eight of my Top 20.  I was shocked to see that neither Creamer nor So Yeon Ryu is in the field.  Really?  Japan's favorite American player and the JLPGA's winner of the U.S. Open passed too?

You want to hear something really odd (boy, this preview is Jam-Packed with 'em!!)?  Paula Creamer has NEVER played in the Mizuno Classic.  My first search at Golfobserver.com returned no results so I looked it up manually - not a single appearance.  She plays one JLPGA event every year (usually the one she shares a sponsor with) but has always steered clear of the one Japanese event co-sanctioned by the LPGA.  I'm not sure which is more shocking - Creamer never having played Mizuno or that I've never noticed before.  Do players still get fined for missing an event four or more years running?

The last four Mizuno winners have been JLPGA members (including Shin, twice) and I would be foolish to bet against that happening again.  I'll defer to The Constructivist on the question of which of them should be expected to challenge.  Even so, we can't ignore the possibility that the red-hot Na Yeon Choi could dominate this field and take her second win in three events.

Wow...only six of this week's 20 are in the field at Mizuno (absentees are bolded).  I can hardly wait to tally the Field Score.

In case you were wondering, the next twelve players on my Hot List who ARE playing are Hee-Won Han, Jiyai Shin, Mika Miyazato, Ai Miyazato, Tiffany Joh, Jenny Shin, Shanshan Feng, Jimin Kang, In-Kyung Kim, Catriona Matthew, Mi Hyun Kim and Candie Kung.  Dewi Claire Schreefel, who is #41 on this week's List, is the next in line but she isn't even in the field yet (first alternate as of noonish EDT Monday).