The players only have to travel about 30 miles south to reach their next tournament, the Fields Open. Ko Olina Resort in Honolulu hosts this event for the third time. Stacy Prammanasudh won last year, by one shot over Jee Young Lee. Just like the SBS, the Fields is a 54-hole event which starts Thursday and ends Saturday and all three rounds will be televised live on Golf Channel.
Ko Olina is a par-72 which plays to 6519 yards. The course has played as one of the easiest on Tour the first two times through, with average scoring of 71.6 and 72.3 in ’05 and ’06 respectively. Honolulu’s forecast through Saturday looks great with winds no greater than 15mph, so the low scoring here should continue.
It’s time for another installment of The Wie Saga. In the field on a sponsor’s exemption, Michelle will begin her attempted resurgence in front of the home folks and since she's an early starter Thursday, I’m sure GC will put her in the Friday TV groups. I’m actually rooting for her to do well, not that I’m expecting much. Hopefully Michelle isn’t expecting much either, so she will relax and just play a little golf. The rest of the field resembles last week’s – two of the Top 10s (Ochoa, MH Kim) and six total Top 30s (Ahn, Matthew, Webb, Davies, Inkster) are missing. Se Ri Pak makes her debut in an odd bit of scheduling, most likely to avoid playing three straight weeks while recovering from a bad shoulder. Ji-Yai Shin did not get another last-minute sponsor’s exemption so the Rolex #7 is absent but in her place we have Sakura Yokomine and Miki Saiki, two of the best the JLPGA has to offer. The difference here, of course, is that Fields is a Japanese sponsor while SBS stands for “Seoul Broadcasting System”. Michelle McGann is the “Category A” player again this week after missing the cut at +11 at SBS. Johanna Head (#11) was the final non-exempt player to get into the Fields field, leaving Yu Ping Lin (#12) on the outside.
As I said the other day, I’m expecting the “free-for-all” final round to be the norm this year and this week should be no exception. With low winds, the course should be easy enough for anyone to go low. So who is going the lowest? Now that “Annika’s back” you might expect me to choose her again, especially since I’m batting 1.000 for the first time ever because of her. No, I’ll make her a CYA along with Paula Creamer but the player who is going to win the Fields is Angela Park. No slow-play penalty this week, I betcha.
Stats: Winners 1-1, Top Tens 1-3.
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Good choice HD Angela Park was my pick to collect her first win of her young career. The reality exists where we could have three rookies placing I,2,3 I refer to Park, Ueda and Tseng you could even throw Wie into the mix. Yikes! That would wake up old Diamond Head.
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