The 100th Post

To commemorate my 100th post to this blog, I thought I would jot down various things I have learned over the last six months along with some assorted thoughts about the coming season:

Despite what I wrote on more than one occasion last summer, Angela Stanford is NOT still looking for her first LPGA victory. She won the ShopRite LPGA Classic in 2003. Sorry, Angela.

I’ve determined that I’m pretty good at picking three players who I think will finish in the Top 10 of each week’s tournament. I’ve also determined that I suck at picking who is going to win.

Janice Moodie was never in danger of losing her exempt status at the end of 2006. She is still reaping the benefit of having two career victories through the 2002 season - an exemption that is no longer awarded – and she received a Medical Extension after giving birth to her son Craig.

The players in the Japanese LPGA are a bit better than I thought they were before the Mizuno Classic. I still don’t think Yuri Fudoh was a Top 10 player, however.

If the Commissioner’s number one priority right now isn’t to resolve the two “TBA”s on the 2007 LPGA schedule, it ought to be.

The lone non-exempt player on my 2006 Favorite Women Golfers list, Erica Blasberg, earned exempt status for 2007 by finishing in the Top 15 at Q-School. I now feel obligated to find another non-exempt candidate for my list, even if I have to expand it beyond ten players. Not sure I’m ready to remove anybody from last year’s list.

While I have a Favorite Women Golfers list, I can’t think of a single player to put on a Hated Women Golfers list. There have to be at least a couple of bitches out there, but at this point I’m unaware of them. If you have any candidates for such a list, be sure to pass them along!

Even after going through three modifications of my player rating system, I don’t really know how good a player Meena Lee is.

I still like Michelle Wie despite the poor career decisions that have been made for her. And PGA players need to shut up about Michelle taking tournament spots from them – if the sponsors who make their megabuck purses possible want to award a sponsorship exemption to Cheryl Ladd, Bill Murray or the late Gerald Ford, I would say “By all means, sirs!”

Dottie Pepper has full exempt status through the 2007 season. I’d love to see her tee it up one more time like Nancy Lopez did last July.

For my sanity’s sake, I’m really hoping that Cristie Kerr continues to use her maiden name. It took me two years to figure out that Rachel Teske and Rachel Hetherington are the same person, not to mention that I keep misspelling “Heatherington”.

The Evian Masters is NOT one of the four major tournaments, even though it probably should be.

If Julieta Granada can play well enough to win the ADT Championship with its million-dollar check while Lorena Ochoa and Karrie Webb are breathing down her neck, she deserves her fourth-place standing on the money list. But Seon Hwa Lee had the better season and deserved the Rookie Of The Year award.

February 15th can’t get here fast enough.