SemGroup Championship – Epilogue

This “day after” Epilogue post seems to be working out ok, so maybe I should do it every week.

Mi Hyun Kim’s victory was her second straight by way of a playoff. She sent Natalie Gulbis on the downward slide into her current funk by defeating her on the third extra hole at last year’s Jamie Farr. Prior to that win, Peanut had been 0-3 in playoffs. UPDATE: Happy at Seoulsisters.com points out that Kim has actually won three playoffs - the 2000 Safeway over Jeong Jang, the 2006 Jamie Farr, and yesterday. I don't know if that makes her real record in playoffs 3-3 or 3-2. Looks like somebody needs to review the playoff records statistics.

Yesterday was only the third time in nine career playoffs that Juli Inkster failed to emerge as the winner. Juli has a well-earned reputation as a good match-play golfer, so that stat doesn’t really surprise me.

Despite having several players on the leaderboard we aren’t accustomed to seeing, the only player I could find who earned her best career finish this week was Stephanie Louden. Her T5 tops the T8 she had at the 2003 Wachovia.

Only eight players completed the tournament under par, and only twelve avoided finishing over par. Counting the players who missed the cut, 27 players finished at +10 or worse. All this with lift-clean-place rules in effect throughout. Tough course!

At the Seoulsisters message board, I play their weekly Pak Picker game and usually do pretty well. Not this week, though – Suzann Pettersen, Stacy P, Shi Hyun Ahn, Brittany Lincicome and Julieta Granada really let me down. It was only a matter of time before my bad picks on this forum bled over to that one.

Stephanie Louden and Katherine Hull are now official candidates for the 2007 Hound Dog’s Favorite Women Golfers list, joining Shi Hyun Ahn, Celeste Troche and Momoko Ueda on the ballot. Of course, all members of the 2006 list earn automatic exemptions to this year’s finals. By the way - to qualify for this list, I must have seen the player competing on television or in person. Just seeing a picture on GolfBabes.com doesn’t qualify, unfortunately for Anna Rawson and Nikki Garrett. Maybe Kirsty Gallacher could get a sponsor’s exemption into the British Open?