Monday, April 30, 2007

Corona Championship – Epilogue

A few more musings on the Corona Championship:

Prior to winning yesterday, Silvia Cavalleri’s career line read like this – 159 starts, 101 cuts made, no victories, eight Top 10s. Her best finish on the money list was 59th in 2002, although she earned more money in both 2005 and 2006. She has only managed a couple of points here and there in my statistical rankings, coming nowhere near the Top 30 (or Top 50, for that matter) in any season. It remains to be seen if she can follow up this performance with similar results, but for right now this one goes on the Fluke Victories chart.

You might say that Meaghan Francella’s win should be considered a fluke. Her performances since that victory (two Top 10s, one of them at the Nabisco) qualify it as a “non-fluke” in my book.

Cavalleri does have one prior professional victory. On the LET back in 1999, she won the Royal Marie Claire Open. She had twice before finished tied for third in LPGA events, once in 2002 and once in 2004. All four of Silvia’s rounds at Tres Marias were in the 60s – it’s hard NOT to win if you do that. Also, her birthplace is "Italy" - just like Giulia Sergas!!

Pat Hurst’s triple-bogey on the final hole cost her just under $24,000. She can take some solace in the fact that she would have had the same finish (fourth place) had she bogeyed, doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled that hole.

With the weaker field, quite a few players posted their best career finish. Na On Min finished fifth in only her second career event while Linda Wessberg and Teresa Lu finished tied for ninth. Erica Blasberg’s T18 was also the best of her career.

Like some other folks around the web, I have no idea what happened to Jee Young Lee this week. I mentioned in the tournament preview that only nine of my top 41 players were in attendance – Lee and Brittany Lang were the only two of those to miss the cut, and Lang has been really struggling in ’07. Lee was coming off three straight Top 20s and hadn’t finished worse than T35 this year. You just never know, do you?

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