Part Two of the Asian Swing is the second annual Honda LPGA Thailand, held this year on the Pattaya Old Course at Siam Country Club in Pattaya City, Thailand. Hee-Won Han makes her return from maternity leave to defend her title, a five-stroke victory over Diana D’Alessio. The 72-hole event begins Thursday morning (Wednesday evening in the U.S.A – Bangkok is 11 hours ahead of EDT).
The Old Course is 6469 yards long and plays to a par of 72. The course opened in 1971 but was renovated and re-opened this past spring. As The Constructivist points out at Mostly Harmless, the tournament website has an unusual amount of good and informative features like a course layout map and a link to online TV coverage. The weather will be the polar-opposite from Korea’s – temps near 90 with humidity about the same. The scoring should be a little better this week! The field is another good one – add Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Annika Sorenstam, Sophie Gustafson and Han while subtracting Ochoa and Mi Hyun Kim. With only 60 players total, I don’t expect there to be a cut after two rounds (there wasn’t one last year, but that event was only 54 holes), but I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere.
Several Thai golfers will be playing due to sponsor’s exemptions and local qualifying but unlike the Korean and Japanese events on this swing, there isn’t a large influx of local talent to challenge for the win. As I said before, no Ochoa this week so I can’t rely on my usual prognosticating “crutch”. The obvious choice to win here would be Suzann Pettersen, so I shouldn’t disappoint you – Pettersen to win, with Jeong Jang and Paula Creamer as CYAs.
Stats: Winners 7-26 (10-26 with CYAs), Top Tens 40-76.
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