Let's Play The Numbers Game

Lydia Ko said on Tuesday that she’s not a numbers person. The 18-year old said that keeping up with her own statistics is more than enough to handle and doesn’t keep close track of statistical standings on Tour. She says she looks but doesn’t scour over scenarios and projections and it’s probably a good idea considering how close the standings are in every season-ending award heading into this week.

“No, I don’t even know how those points systems work to be honest,” said Ko. “I heard last week on TV that the winner gets 30 points. I was like, oh, sweet. I didn’t know how it all works. Too many numbers, and I’m not very good at mathematics, either. Adding and minus as long as we’re going up, right, that’s a good thing as long as we’re adding, no dividing and all that, I’m fine.”

“But no, even if I looked at it, I would have no idea what I need to do or what somebody needs to do, so there’s really no point,” Ko added. “If it’s 33 or 23, it still would just be odd numbers to me.”

Inbee Park said she knows it will be very difficult to not keep an eye on Ko this week and to see how her play will affect her own rankings.

“I mean, it’s so hard when you actually have like one competitor to you want to play better than that one person,” said Park. “Not every tournament we have that kind of feeling, but especially the tournament like this where we have everything on the line, and it’s so important what Lydia is doing can affect so many things and what I can achieve.”

When asked which award they would most want to win at week’s end, both Ko and Park said the Rolex Player of the Year. Park was asked if she likes the LPGA’s current points-based setup for the award and she said she does and thinks it leaves no room for error rather than a popularity contest. But the seven-time major champ was humble as always and failed to give an answer to who she would vote for if she had a vote.

“I know two major tournaments is very important part of the season, but you know, what Lydia has done is definitely very amazing, too,” said Park. “What do you guys think? I really don’t know. But you’ve got to give her credit, too. She’s only second year on the Tour and she’s only 18, 19 years old. So I don’t know.”

Inbee Park		Lydia Ko
2nd (4500 reset points)	Race to CME Globe	1st (5000 reset points)
2nd (12.31 avg. points)	Rolex Ranking	1st (12.40 avg. points)
1st (69.433)	Vare Trophy (Scoring Average)	2nd (69.449)
2nd (273 points)	Rolex Player of the Year	1st (276)
2nd ($2,570,096)	Official Money List	1st (2,758,417)

The Butterflies Feel Good

Inbee Park admitted that she had some nerves prior to the final round last week in Mexico when she held a three-shot lead with 18 holes to play and said the butterflies were a great feeling and something she hasn’t had since her last victory at the RICOH Women’s British Open in July. Park said when she told her husband of her pre-round jitters, he responded as anyone should to a 17-time LPGA Tour winner.

“It might sound weird, but I really enjoyed this nervousness,” said Park. “That’s what I said to my husband. He was like, you’re weird. And I feel like I really enjoy it out there in the final round, that nervousness, and like the levels that I can concentrate, like the atmosphere makes me concentrate. It has been a while since I played in the last group, but I really enjoyed it out there last week there.”

The win last week also marked Park’s first career victory in the month of November and has said that she’s been trying to maintain her recent strong summer stretches into the end of the season.

“I got a lot of confidence from there, and obviously coming into the last tournament and also the very important tournament, it’s good to have good momentum, and obviously good confidence coming into this week,” said Park.

Gunning For That No. 1 Spot

The fight for No. 1 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings is once again up for grabs and with just .09 average points separating Lydia Ko and Inbee Park, scenarios for Park to unseat Ko for the top spot are tight. The below scenarios are not including ties.

Inbee would become No. 1 if:

She wins even if Lydia finishes in second.
If Inbee finished in solo second and Lydia didn’t win, Inbee would take over No. 1.
If Inbee finished in solo third, Lydia would have to finish solo fifth or worse.
Inbee needs to finish with at least a 12th place finish to have a chance to take over No. 1.

Hall of Fame In Sight For Park

Inbee Park had no idea how close she was this summer to fulfilling her points eligibility for the LPGA Hall of Fame but when she won her seventh career major at the RICOH Women’s British Open, the media made her well aware of it. With her win last week, she now has 26 of the 27 points that are required for eligibility. Members must also be active for 10 seasons to be eligible; Park will finish her ninth season on Tour this week.

“I really never thought about it until I won the British Open because after I won the British Open there’s a lot of people that’s been talking about the Hall of Fame, and only like two points short of Hall of Fame,” said Park. “Everybody was talking about it. So since then I really got started thinking about it because Hall of Fame was probably my last goal of my career, and I never really thought that it was going to come this early, so I never really thought about it at all.”

Park has three opportunities to get her last point this week. She can earn a point with a victory at the CME Group Tour Championship, by winning the Vare Trophy or by winning the Rolex Player of the Year award.

“But obviously after winning last week, I came really close,” said Park. “I felt like I took a really big step on the road to the Hall of Fame. It’s definitely my career goal, but I didn’t really want to rush it, but it came a lot quicker than I thought. I mean, it’s a true dream come true, I think.”

Third Ain't Bad

Being ranked third on the money list with $1,869,487 and 14 top-10s would be a career year for most players but for Stacy Lewis the year has been marked by one question: “How frustrating is it to not have a win?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t frustrated,” Lewis admitted. “I definitely am. But I played good golf. It’s not like I’ve played really poorly. I just haven’t had everything come together in a tournament.”

Lewis has a chance to change that this week at the CME Group Tour Championship where a victory would net her not only the trophy but a $1 million bonus for winning the Race to CME Globe.

“I definitely would have liked to have won for sure, but all in all if you cannot win a tournament and be third on the Money List and third in the CME points and still have a chance to win a million dollars at the end of the year, it’s really not that bad,” Lewis explained. “I’ve got one more week to win. I’ve got another chance at it.”

Quotable

“So if anything I’ve learned how to move on a little quicker. That would be the biggest thing. Maybe it helps me down the road, maybe not. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to come from it.”

-Stacy Lewis on what she has learned in all of her recent runner-ups and close calls

“I don’t know. It did impact my mom because she finally got the purse she wanted. No, I mean, it would have been really cool if we had that million dollar box itself. Yeah, that would have been really cool. That’s what a lot of people ask me, hey, did you get that box full of cash, and I was like, no. I remember last year they had a security guard for the money, not for us.”

-Lydia Ko on how winning $1.5 million here last here had changed her

Wounded Warriors Honored This Week

Kim Kaufman had a special player in her pro-am group today at the CME Group Tour Championship in Dan Nevins director of the Warriors Speak® team for the Wounded Warrior Project®.

“It was a very good experience,” Kaufman said. “We didn’t play very good but it puts things in perspective. We’re just playing a game. What he’s done is truly life or death. I felt very honored to play with him and it was a great time for me.”

Nevins was deployed to Balad, Iraq, in February of 2004 as a squad leader. Later that year, an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated beneath his vehicle, resulting in a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the amputation of his left leg below the knee. After several years of recurring infections and countless surgeries, Dan chose to surgically remove his right leg as well, making him a bilateral amputee. In 2009, Dan decided to join the WWP team, serving in several key positions within the organization.

The LPGA has partnered with the Wounded Warrior Project® for the past two seasons through the Wounded Warrior Project Weekends. So far this season $261,000 has been raised. In 2014, $283,000 had been raised through eagles made by Tour players and the CME Group generously rounded up to $300,000.

2015 CME Group Tour Championship Tuesday Pre-Tournament Notes

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