Monday, March 17, 2008

MasterCard Classic – Epilogue

Louise Friberg is a 27-year-old Swede who played collegiate golf at the University of Washington and was a first-team all-Pac10 selection in 2003. She turned pro before the 2005 season and spent that year mostly playing on the Futures Tour, registering 11 Top 10 finishes. The last two years Louise has played on the LET, posting two Top 10s in 2006 and three in 2007. She finished 33rd at the British Open after being only two shots out of the lead following Round One. I’m not prepared to call this a Fluke Victory as yet – Lollo finished T7 at Fields and she could continue this kind of success. Her previous record didn’t really suggest she could be expected to win so we’ll just have to wait and see if she has reached another level of playing ability.

One of Larry Smich’s buddies, Rick “The Nerd” Kropf, was on the winning bag. It’s easy to forget that when a player breaks through with an unexpected victory, it usually brings an unexpected windfall to their caddy as well. Don’t spend it all in one place, Rick!

There are now
Round Two highlights available at ESPN Deportes. Hopefully they will post some final round video in the next day or so – I’d like to see how close Tseng came to birdying any of the last three holes.

Like TC says, I was much too modest to point out that I was absolutely right about Oh and Tseng coming back to the field – but that was yesterday. If I could only have been that accurate with my pre-tourney picks… Lorena Ochoa managed a Top 10 finish but Stacy P (T45) and Angela Stanford (MC) let me down in a big way. Angela gets the Big Disappointment Award this week.

Before I forget, Yani Tseng posted her best career finish at the MasterCard with that runner-up. It wasn’t the result she wanted but I’m sure she can use the experience to build on. We have quite the Rookie of the Year race brewing here – Friberg now leads the way followed by Tseng, Na Yeon Choi and Momoko Ueda.

The Big Surprise has to be Louise Friberg but I’ll give shout-outs to Tseng, Jane Park (T3), Choi (T5), Eva Dahllof (T5), Ji-Young Oh (T8) and Irene Cho (T10). Choi, Dahllof and Cho join Friberg and Tseng in the career-best-finish category.

1 comment:

The Constructivist said...

Hey, man, just wanted to let you know Golfweek gave the full results of the 2nd JLPGA event (in English, even!), the Accordia Golf Ladies, which your pal Yuri Fudoh won in Fribergesque fashion, complete with disappointment of Taiwanese runner-up!