The Tour visits Richmond this week to play the Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill. The River Course at Kingsmill Resort & Spa is once again host to this $2.2 million event. Karrie Webb blitzed the field last year, winning by seven strokes over Lorena Ochoa and Hee-Won Han. The tournament starts Thursday with coverage on ESPN2 beginning Friday afternoon.
To make things perfectly clear - if ESPN wants to spend about ten or fifteen minutes of their six hours of coverage this weekend to do a piece on Mi Hyun Kim and her donation to the Kansas tornado victims, they have my blessing.
The River Course is a par-71 at 6306 yards. Even though (and maybe because) Webb’s victory was wire-to-wire, last year’s event was most memorable for being Annika Sorenstam’s first missed cut in four years. That cut was +3 - about the average for most tournaments – and she missed it by one shot.
We have our second strong field in a row – the larger purse helps in that regard. I’m going to pick Lorena Ochoa again to win. Until she sits out an event, I’ll keep on picking her. Last week’s darts missed completely so this week I’m using a Ouiji board to come up with CYA choices. Paula Creamer and Juli Inkster are this week’s doomed contestants.
Stats: Winners 0-8, Top Tens 11-24.
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4 comments:
Hi Hound Dog,
This time I am going to favor your winner pick. I think Lorena will take it, my CYA's Karrie Webb and Suzann Pettersen who has been playing consistently well specially in the last round.
Hey, Hound Dog, added you to my blogroll! How do you feel about Ochoa after the first round?
Also, with all the players talking about any given week 30-50 people can win (depending on which player is mouthing this not-quite-cliche-this-year), I'd suggest you expand your top 20 to 25, 30, 40, or 50 (depending on where you think the significant quality drop-off occurs). 20 is too few, IMHO.
I know, more work for you. I've started informally tracking the Super Sophs and plan to update my list at the start of each month....
I agree with both of you that it's especially difficult to pick a winner right now. I did reasonably ok towards the end of last year picking Kerr and Ochoa most weeks.
Ochoa will be in the Top 10 on Sunday - bank on it!
In my system, once I get past 20 players the differences between them are very small. I've toyed with going to 25 and in my historical lists I've shown 30, so one of those might be the ticket. Expanding wouldn't be much more work, but the post would be a bit long!
Thanks for the comments and suggestions guys!
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