Season Results

[Blue]

Results of the 2009 Futures Tour Season

Earning Full 2010 LPGA Tour Cards:

1. Mina Hirgae of Monterey, California
2. Jean Reynolds of Newman, Georgia
3. Misun Cho of Cheongju, South Korea
4. Samantha Richdale or Kelowna, British Columbia
5. Song Yi Choi of Seoul, South Korea

Earning Limited 2010 LPGA Tour Cards:

6. Whitney Wade of Glasgow, Kentucky
7. Angela Buzminski of Oshawa, Ontario
8. Christine Song of Fullterton, California
9. Alison Walshe of Westford, Massachusetts
10. Dewi Claire Schreefel of Deipenveen, Netherlands

Earning Automatic Entry into Final Round of Q-School:

Pernilla Lindberg of Bolinas, Sweden
Gerina Mendoza of Roswell, New Mexico
Danah Fod of Indianapolis, Indiana
Lisa Meldrum of Montreal, Quebec
Jenny Suh of Fairfax, Virginia
Liz Janangelo of West Hartford, Connecticut

http://www.duramedfuturestour.com/Ne...rdWinners.html

[NTB]

Blue... Some of these girls have the guts of the early lpga founders.
I go to their site and look at the money. Very few can cover expenses.
I also admire the caddies who make nothing in a lot of cases,maybe "2 hamburgers and 50 cents." 1950's joke.
Tough life...

[Carl Spackler]

I went to this past weekend’s final FT event at Albany, but only for some of the 2nd and final rounds, so I can’t provide anything more than some very isolated anecdotes. And unfortunately I had to leave before the very dramatic finish:

-Recap on the Futures Tour website:
Daily Wrap Story - 9/6/09

-Recap in the local paper:
Choi's putt on the money -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY:2997:

-Discussion on the Constructivist’s blog (have to scroll down):
Mostly Harmless

1) How to speak Australian:

Misun Cho discusses the new LPGA policy of awarding the top money winners gift cards to Long John Silver’s (0:21-0:42):

YouTube - ROAD2LPGA's Channel

She’ll need to work with the LPGA language tutor, though. In the half-round or so that I followed her she never once said “Crikey!” (RIP S.I.)

She does have a very nice short game. But I’ll leave that aspect of her game for others to explore, I want to write about a badly-read putt. Misun sent a 30-footer 3 feet wide and 4 feet long, an acceptable putt that left her a 5-foot comebacker. (Or something like that, I’m not good at calculus.) She read a 2-foot (ok maybe 18-inch) right-to-left break, put the proper speed on the ball, and sent it 2 inches past and 2 feet (ok maybe 18 inches) wide. Was that break a hallucination caused by the residual effects of sunstroke suffered while sunbathing at Pepperdine? Whatever, her green-reading skills immediately returned (she nailed a 6-foot birdie on the next hole).

(At Harrisburg Maria Hernandez missed a 10-footer as her ball with the “proper” speed took a 90-degree turn an inch from the cup and ended up 2 inches to the cup’s left (from her perspective). She then went through hand motions that described roll of the putt, including its tortuous end, which I thought interesting.)

2) Mina Harigae’s glaring weakness:

Mina’s got one big problem with her game: her bag is a piece of crap! Well, not quite, but I did notice it which means it’s not one of the nicer ones seen around the FT. (It must be 3 seasons old since it bears a “2007 Ping Invitational” logo, and is definitely showing some age.) I would think it’s a no-brainer for some sponsor to step up and deck out one of the most visible up-and-comers in golf. Hey P&G, how about a bag with an Ivory soap logo?

3) One’s a fluke, two’s a coincidence, three’s a trend:

Nontaya “Net” Srisawang played herself out of contention on Sunday, but she did make a couple of very impressive bogie saves. On the par 3 7th she buried (literally) her tee shot in the back face of the front bunker, requiring not only digging the ball out but also sending it up on an angle of at least 60 degrees to avoid the bunker’s lip. I was thinking at the very best 2 shots in the bunker and a 5, but instead she powered the ball out and up with enough force (and with the most sand I’ve ever seen) to actually make it onto the edge of the green, at which point she received the kind of applause usually reserved for holing out. She then almost made the 30-foot par save.

On the next hole (the par 5 475 yard 8th) she went for it in two but pushed the ball right, down into the overgrown gully that a stream runs through, green-high. (She also sent it through the group ahead as they loaded onto carts for the trip to the next hole, and her “fore!” was the only thing that prevented someone from being hit and her from actually having a good position from which to approach the green. Does “Nice guys finish last” have a Thai equivalent?) She was at least 30 feet below the raised green, in long thick grass, her ball invisible to anyone but herself, and 30 yards from the pin. I figured this was snowman territory. Instead she hit a moon shot that went over and landed a few yards off the green in the rough covering the front side of a hill, from where she pitched and two-putted for a bogey.

At Harrisburg 2 weeks ago on a par 4 she sent her tee shot deep into thick woods and underbrush on the left. She must’ve had a lie that blocked punching back through an existing break in the thick growth (only the shadow knows, since only the shadow went into the woods with her), so instead she hacked her ball onto some barren ground on the next hole (it was the area between the tee box and the start of the rough/fairway). She then pitched through a pretty limited break in the trees created by a small pond, into the rough that surrounds the green, from where she chipped and one-putted for a bogie.

Now if only she can turn that type of heroics into par saves...

4) Seo-Jae Lee rumor that may be of some interest:

Seo-Jae was a top-5 2007 FT money winner but only a marginal 2008 LPGAer (23 tournaments, 12 MC, 2 WD, best finish T15, 2nd best 34, 128 on the money list), but she’s just turned 21 so she’s still young. A win at Albany would’ve put her into the top 5 again, and a T3 into the top 10, so I was surprised that she didn’t enter, even though she had WDI during the 2nd round at Harrisburg 2 weeks ago (I figured given the stakes she’d at least tee it up).

I was told that she wasn’t injured at Harrisburg, instead she quit golf. And that’s all professional golf, not just US pro golf. Take this for what it’s worth: hearsay from an anonymous internet poster who himself received it via hearsay. Applications to LPGA Q-school are due today, so we’ll find out about the US soon enough, but if anyone comes across any info about Seo-Jae’s (possible) foreign activities (I was also told she went back to Korea), whether golf related or not, I for one would be interested.

If true, I also have to say I’m not surprised. I followed her groups quite a bit at Syracuse and Harrisburg, and she interacted with her caddie in an unusual way. I didn’t post on it since at the time I didn’t see any relevance to info that could add to the overdone “overbearing Korean father” debate, but in light of the rumor I do now. Her caddie was a middle-aged Asian gentleman who, based on their interaction, I fairly quickly assumed was either a relative or someone she knew quite well (although I have no proof of that). What I do have proof of is that when the dude was within speaking distance of Seo-Jae, he just would not stop advising her.

This is best illustrated by describing Seo-Jae and Jenny Suh’s final round/final group at Syracuse, where they dueled with Jenny finally winning due to Seo-Jae’s bogey on the 1st playoff hole. Jenny and her caddie (another FT player) did what I consider average behavior: take care of business, then quietly watch the group ahead or chat about (based on facial expressions etc) something not related to the task at hand. Seo-Jae and her caddie took care of business, Seo-Jae would then walk several paces away, her caddie would pull out his yardage book again and approach Seo-Jae to discuss the shot further, and that scenario could repeat itself as long as the group ahead allowed it to. By the end of the round I kept thinking “C’mon, man! Stop filling her head with details and let her concentrate on executing a plan, ANY plan!” On the final hole, after she mis-hit the approach that would be her demise he started talking and she shot off down the fairway, ignoring him and sending whatever’s the Korean equivalent of STFU!

(I also want to emphasize that in visits to three FT tournaments I’ve seen plenty of relatives of plenty of players, and most of the Koreans behave no differently than most of the Americans.)

Since this might be my last ever mention of Seo-Jae, I’ll also describe her amusing behavior on the greens. Whenever Jenny had an important putt Seo-Jae would stand at the edge of the green with her back to the hole and Jenny, I suppose trying to enter some Zen-like state that denies the pressure of the moment. But then sometimes she’d peek! wtf?! Doesn’t peeking defeat the purpose of standing with your back to the putt? When Seo-Jae had an important putt, she would walk a complete circle around her line, squatting to study down it from both ends, but also squatting to look across it from both sides. But she wouldn’t spend more than a fraction of a second looking across it, not enough time to get any information! This was clearly nothing more than an “important putt” ritual. On the “really important putts” I half expected her to add marking her line with pig’s blood and dropping a few chicken feathers into the hole.

Anyway, I wish Seo-Jae happiness and success in whatever she chooses to do (including golf, if that’s what she continues to do).

[LoJo]

As usual, good report, Carl.....with your weird added humor too.

Thanks.