More 2008 Player Status

About two weeks ago I mentioned that the player status list had been posted at lpga.com but only commented that Ashley Johnston (Hoagland) had received the medical extension we were hoping for. Now that I’ve had some time to really eyeball it…

Other players who also received medical extensions are Helen Alfredsson, Marisa Baena, Jackie Gallagher-Smith, Hee-Won Han, Candy Hannemann, Becky Iverson, Seol-An Jeon, Hilary Lunke, Miriam Nagl, Nicole Perrot, Laurie Rinker, Karen Stupples and Sung Ah Yim (maternity cases in bold). Alfredsson, Hannemann, Iverson, Jeon, Nagl and Rinker would all have been non-exempt in 2008 if not for their doctors’ notes. In fact, Jeon and Rinker both got extensions last year as well. If there’s a limit for how many of these a player can get, I haven’t seen it.

This has nothing to do with exempt status but…how did I miss this one?!? While Googling for more info on the mommies, I hit on several 2005 articles about an ex-caddy suing Jackie Gallagher-Smith for seducing him to get pregnant. Couldn’t find anything on how that suit was resolved, although it appears that Jackie and her husband are still together.

Back on topic – the Code 7 exemption has been tightened up for 2008. Now any player in the Top 40 of the career money list not otherwise exempt receives only a one-year exemption (down from two). This is now called Code 7b. Code 7a is now a two-year exemption for any player in the Top 20 of the career money list. I guess the LPGA is getting tired of holding onto unused exemptions for Dottie Pepper and Betsy King.

Momoko Ueda won the Mizuno Classic in November, but only gets a one-year exemption rather than three because she was a not a member of the LPGA at the time of the victory (Code 12).

Double-D lives on! Heather Daly-Donofrio received a medical extension prior to the 2007 season, so she STILL has an exempt year left from her victory in the 2004 Mitchell TOC. This exemption stuff gets pretty tricky sometimes - those old extensions tend to slip by me - but I’ll try to do better with it this fall. Note to the LPGA – your status page is really helpful, but a nice addition would be to put a player’s exemption expiration date in parentheses. Seeing “Ochoa, Lorena (2012)” would help put all those codes into perspective.