Post by philknj on May 22, 2022 7:25:20 GMT
I avoided the vehicular logjams ... left my house 60 minutes earlier than yesterday and arrived 90 minutes earlier (around 7 AM) at Upper Montclair CC in Clifton, NJ.
I carried in a first-round tee sheet I had printed off at home from the LPGA website, but it didn’t make sense. I thought Ayaka Furue and Hee Young Park were going off in the first groups, but they weren’t. Then I noticed I was looking at tee times from Lotte/Hawaii in April ... doh! I asked the people in the starter’s booth for a sheet and right at that moment a cart drove up with a stack of them.
I watched Furue in the pro-am yesterday, so I decided to skip her at #1 and go with the first group at the par-4 10th (322 yards), Hee Young Park, Mel Reid and Jeong Eun Lee 5 for nine holes. It’s odd how many pros played this hole with less than driver during the pro-ams, but used driver when the real golf began on Thursday. I don’t think it was a good driver hole for long hitters like Reid, who left herself an awkward pitch to a shallow, tilted green protected by bunkers and a brook ... made a scrambly par.
BTW, the next group to hit at #10 included rookie Agathe Laisne, who sported a completely white bag ... no brands, no logos ... I could be wrong, but I don’t think her name was on it, either. I saw her the day before wearing a Titleist cap, which was probably the same cap she wore today, except she wore a thermal headband around her cap so you couldn’t see whatever brands were on it. I got the message: she is for sale, but who wants to buy?
The par-4 11th hole was one of the drive measuring holes and Reid got it out there at the 290 marker (I’m guessing a certain amount of distance was subtracted for the recorded stat). Except for being the longest in the group, she didn’t show me much. She made a big splash going with Miura irons a couple of years back, but I think she ditched them. It was hard to see her bag, but I think she is now gaming a mixed set of Mizuno irons; I distinctly remember seeing a Mizzy MP-20 muscleback PW.
Reid hit one of the worst shots I saw all day. The 334-yard par-4 18th (played as #9 during 2007-09) was a pathetic finishing hole ... a punt followed by an extra point kick. Nevertheless, with a FW or hybrid, she missed the entire football field with a duck hook ... punched out to the right rough and made bogey to finish her first nine at +3.
I was not surprised to see Unlucky Five hit an occasional wayward shot and still get out of jail ... that was her pattern on the KLPGA. Her putter was working mighty fine and she finished her first nine at -1.
The Rocket’s game was not particularly memorable, aside from being the shortest driver in the group, and she finished her first nine at +1. I couldn’t help notice the white lightweight thermal vest she wore. The area on it behind her neck has the brand name in black block letters, but most of the letters had fallen off. It should say ‘LOUIS’ on top and ‘CASTEL’ just below it, but all that remains is ‘OU’ and ‘AS’. C’mon man, she should not be going to the golf course wearing junk like this.
I spent almost all of the remaining day on the front nine. I noticed Sophia Popov was -3 on the back nine, so I picked up her group at #1, which included Stephanie Kyriacou and Jennifer Chang. Popov was in a groove ... even when she popped her right foot in the air in a weird iron approach follow-through at the par-4 5th, she still made birdie. She got it to -5 before losing a stroke late to finish at 68 (-4) ... one putt did a loop around the lip and two others finished short by an inch, so a 65 was out there for her. Her daddy followed along wearing a Team Germany polo shirt.
Steph’s golf was okay, finished at +1 ... has a strong grip with the right hand, although the left hand appears neutral ... #9 is a drive measuring hole and she reached the 280 marker. Her biggest problem was taking a swallow from her water bottle at the 2nd tee, which went down the wrong way and induced a minor coughing spell.
Chang encountered disaster at the par-4 5th hole. She drove her ball into a left side pot bunker. I was high above her looking down on her lie ... the good news was that she was in the middle of the bunker ... the bad news was that the lip and mound in front of her looked somewhat steep. Should she try to hit it long or short from here? She bet on option one, but hit the lip and stayed in the sand ... made double-bogey and shot +3 for the day.
I camped out behind the 5th green as the group of Muni He, Weiwei Zhang and MJ Uribe arrived at their drives. From the right rough, Zhang’s approach could not hold the green and ran down into a low area near a tree and left of the green. Uribe’s approach was spot-on and she made the birdie putt to reach -4 ... and jogged to the next hole. “Uh oh, these guys are on the clock,” I thought ... I looked around and there he was, the rules guy using the stopwatch function on his smart phone, scribbling numbers on a card and whispering into his walkie-talkie.
After Muni made her par at #5 without undue delay, her looper made a remark to the rules guy that made him chuckle and then he replied, “sorry, I already gave the group ahead of you a warning” ... and that group was nowhere in sight.
It quickly became apparent that the third player in this group should be renamed Waitwait Zhang until further notice. She faced a flop shot from off the green. Most players would be satisfied with dislodging two or three divots as practice before hitting this shot, but she knocked out five or six before hitting it.
Zhang was at -3 and had maybe a ten-footer a little uphill as a par-saver. First, she did the Aimpoint fingers check from behind the line. Then she walked to a spot three feet from the hole and did a couple of practice strokes towards it ... moved back two more feet and did two more practice strokes. Then she squatted behind the ball and pointed the putter grip towards the hole. With her mark down, she adjusted her ball at least four times, probably in an effort to match a line on the ball to the line of her putt, as well as to a line or mark on her putter shaft and/or grip. I think she took at least one practice stroke ... and after all that, she still missed it. As icing on the cake, after everyone’s drives at #9, she did a stationary hydration break in front of the tee box ... maybe drinking water and walking is trickier than I thought.
It's quite possible that Zhang does not know what “on the clock” means as this was only her fifth round of golf on the LPGA this year. It is NOT a valid excuse, especially since she played the Symetra Tour last year, but it might explain why she seemed completely oblivious to the situation at hand. She is the first FLAGRANT slowpoke I have ever seen in person on the LPGA since I first started attending this tour’s events in 2005.
The Zhang/He/Uribe group left the 9th green and started walking to the scoring area inside the clubhouse. The rules guy hit the gas to catch up with Zhang (who shot -3). I thought, “oh boy, here it comes, he’s gonna drop a two-shot bomb on her and she’ll burst into tears.” Alas, there was no penalty and no waterworks, but the rules guy did stop her to give her a warning, I guess, which prompted her looper to say, “She’s working on it.” Uribe approached Team Zhang and politely threw in her two cents, saying the phrase “it’s thirty seconds” about four times. Lastly, Uribe’s caddie Ivan Galdame cornered Zhang’s caddie for more friendly advice ... “We’re working on it” was the reply to that. BTW, Zhang’s caddie this year has been Yiran Meng ... Chinese-American I assume (speaks perfect English), but this guy looked and sounded WAY too clean-cut, polished and innocent to be a looper from any tour.
I picked up the group of Robynn Ree, Rachel Rohanna and Sung Hyun Park as they approached the 18th hole, which was made even more pathetic by Rohanna teeing off with a 5-iron (strong grip with both hands). I continued on with them to the front nine where I noticed that the par-5 2nd hole (#11 in 2009) was not the same as I remember it. Back in the old days, it was a genuinely tough decision on whether or not to go for the green (protected by a brook) in two, but not today. Set at 468 yards, most of the drives I saw there were finishing between 195 and 205 to the center of a big green ... this is not a tough approach shot for the bulk of these players. Strangely, Haeji Kang hit a layup, which was like giving a up a stroke to the field IMHO.
This was my first look at Throbbin’ Robynn since the 2019 Shoprite/Acer. She ran a little hot under the hood, said “s**t” after a couple of her tee shots, but she was lady-like and whispered it.
She finally ditched all of her Southern Cal attire and went with a brand called Southcape. That’s good marketing ... name your clothes after the #1 golf course in Korea. It appears that taskmaster daddy doesn’t follow her on the course anymore. Currently games a Ping driver and Callaway X-Forged irons with a Ping bag ... plays without a glove, which I had forgotten ... had a Callaway umbrella propped over her head when she wasn’t making a stroke. The latest LPGA priority list has a medical asterisk next to her name ... for what, I don’t know, but she is NOT built like a weakling.
Namdalla had only three quiet Attack Women following her as she got on a roll with birdies on #4 and #5, followed by a par on the par-3 6th. To save my feet and get some shade, I hung out between the 5th green and the 6th tee for a while. Sanna Nuutinen (with a Wilson bag) had the best tee shot I saw at #6 and made an easy birdie.
Megan Khang hit it stiff to the 5th green and when the standard bearer arrived with a red ‘6’ next to Khang’s name, I decided to stick with her group (with Andrea Lee and Ingee Chun) to the end at #9. I saw one non-Asian guy wearing a Flying Dumbo cap, that was it. Khang made the putt to go seven-under.
Khang hit another green at the par-4 7th. Then I got distracted by watching Yealimi Noh on another fairway. When I looked back at the 7th green, Khang was already walking off it. I heard no claps, what did she do? I looked to the standard bearer, who was doing an extended search into his bib pockets before finding a pair of red eights. I know someone who has been a standard bearer. I’ll have to ask him about the organizational system of the numbers inside the bib. There were no more bib searches as Khang made par on the last two holes for a 64.
The par-4 16th green was near the clubhouse and I turned my attention to the group there, Bianca Pagdanganan, Ruixin Liu and Gerina Mendoza. Bianca burned up the first 15 holes at -7, but her second shot was in the right greenside bunker. Her splash-out was lousy, leaving about a 15-foot par putt that she missed, dropping her to -6. She made par on the last two holes and had a small welcoming committee near the scorecard table, including fanboy Steve Eubanks of the LPGA brass.
There were six groups still playing when I decided to go home. I stopped at the range where Gerina Mendoza was working up a sweat after shooting 72. She was wearing a green glove, which I hadn’t noticed on the course. After further research, she has worn a green glove occasionally since 2019. Ken Green and Charley Hoffman have done green.
Range rat Amanda Doherty took out a Ping G-425 Crossover utility iron, did a couple of Keegan Bradley waggles and clubhead flips before pulling the trigger ... and did it over and over with this club. She has a loosey-goosey swing with a statue pose on her finish, which includes turning her outer right ankle partially towards her target, like Karrie Webb did. She’s short and not athletic looking, but I won’t be surprised if she outplays Florida St. teammate Frida Kinhult (ex-WAGR #1) in the pros.
I carried in a first-round tee sheet I had printed off at home from the LPGA website, but it didn’t make sense. I thought Ayaka Furue and Hee Young Park were going off in the first groups, but they weren’t. Then I noticed I was looking at tee times from Lotte/Hawaii in April ... doh! I asked the people in the starter’s booth for a sheet and right at that moment a cart drove up with a stack of them.
I watched Furue in the pro-am yesterday, so I decided to skip her at #1 and go with the first group at the par-4 10th (322 yards), Hee Young Park, Mel Reid and Jeong Eun Lee 5 for nine holes. It’s odd how many pros played this hole with less than driver during the pro-ams, but used driver when the real golf began on Thursday. I don’t think it was a good driver hole for long hitters like Reid, who left herself an awkward pitch to a shallow, tilted green protected by bunkers and a brook ... made a scrambly par.
BTW, the next group to hit at #10 included rookie Agathe Laisne, who sported a completely white bag ... no brands, no logos ... I could be wrong, but I don’t think her name was on it, either. I saw her the day before wearing a Titleist cap, which was probably the same cap she wore today, except she wore a thermal headband around her cap so you couldn’t see whatever brands were on it. I got the message: she is for sale, but who wants to buy?
The par-4 11th hole was one of the drive measuring holes and Reid got it out there at the 290 marker (I’m guessing a certain amount of distance was subtracted for the recorded stat). Except for being the longest in the group, she didn’t show me much. She made a big splash going with Miura irons a couple of years back, but I think she ditched them. It was hard to see her bag, but I think she is now gaming a mixed set of Mizuno irons; I distinctly remember seeing a Mizzy MP-20 muscleback PW.
Reid hit one of the worst shots I saw all day. The 334-yard par-4 18th (played as #9 during 2007-09) was a pathetic finishing hole ... a punt followed by an extra point kick. Nevertheless, with a FW or hybrid, she missed the entire football field with a duck hook ... punched out to the right rough and made bogey to finish her first nine at +3.
I was not surprised to see Unlucky Five hit an occasional wayward shot and still get out of jail ... that was her pattern on the KLPGA. Her putter was working mighty fine and she finished her first nine at -1.
The Rocket’s game was not particularly memorable, aside from being the shortest driver in the group, and she finished her first nine at +1. I couldn’t help notice the white lightweight thermal vest she wore. The area on it behind her neck has the brand name in black block letters, but most of the letters had fallen off. It should say ‘LOUIS’ on top and ‘CASTEL’ just below it, but all that remains is ‘OU’ and ‘AS’. C’mon man, she should not be going to the golf course wearing junk like this.
I spent almost all of the remaining day on the front nine. I noticed Sophia Popov was -3 on the back nine, so I picked up her group at #1, which included Stephanie Kyriacou and Jennifer Chang. Popov was in a groove ... even when she popped her right foot in the air in a weird iron approach follow-through at the par-4 5th, she still made birdie. She got it to -5 before losing a stroke late to finish at 68 (-4) ... one putt did a loop around the lip and two others finished short by an inch, so a 65 was out there for her. Her daddy followed along wearing a Team Germany polo shirt.
Steph’s golf was okay, finished at +1 ... has a strong grip with the right hand, although the left hand appears neutral ... #9 is a drive measuring hole and she reached the 280 marker. Her biggest problem was taking a swallow from her water bottle at the 2nd tee, which went down the wrong way and induced a minor coughing spell.
Chang encountered disaster at the par-4 5th hole. She drove her ball into a left side pot bunker. I was high above her looking down on her lie ... the good news was that she was in the middle of the bunker ... the bad news was that the lip and mound in front of her looked somewhat steep. Should she try to hit it long or short from here? She bet on option one, but hit the lip and stayed in the sand ... made double-bogey and shot +3 for the day.
I camped out behind the 5th green as the group of Muni He, Weiwei Zhang and MJ Uribe arrived at their drives. From the right rough, Zhang’s approach could not hold the green and ran down into a low area near a tree and left of the green. Uribe’s approach was spot-on and she made the birdie putt to reach -4 ... and jogged to the next hole. “Uh oh, these guys are on the clock,” I thought ... I looked around and there he was, the rules guy using the stopwatch function on his smart phone, scribbling numbers on a card and whispering into his walkie-talkie.
After Muni made her par at #5 without undue delay, her looper made a remark to the rules guy that made him chuckle and then he replied, “sorry, I already gave the group ahead of you a warning” ... and that group was nowhere in sight.
It quickly became apparent that the third player in this group should be renamed Waitwait Zhang until further notice. She faced a flop shot from off the green. Most players would be satisfied with dislodging two or three divots as practice before hitting this shot, but she knocked out five or six before hitting it.
Zhang was at -3 and had maybe a ten-footer a little uphill as a par-saver. First, she did the Aimpoint fingers check from behind the line. Then she walked to a spot three feet from the hole and did a couple of practice strokes towards it ... moved back two more feet and did two more practice strokes. Then she squatted behind the ball and pointed the putter grip towards the hole. With her mark down, she adjusted her ball at least four times, probably in an effort to match a line on the ball to the line of her putt, as well as to a line or mark on her putter shaft and/or grip. I think she took at least one practice stroke ... and after all that, she still missed it. As icing on the cake, after everyone’s drives at #9, she did a stationary hydration break in front of the tee box ... maybe drinking water and walking is trickier than I thought.
It's quite possible that Zhang does not know what “on the clock” means as this was only her fifth round of golf on the LPGA this year. It is NOT a valid excuse, especially since she played the Symetra Tour last year, but it might explain why she seemed completely oblivious to the situation at hand. She is the first FLAGRANT slowpoke I have ever seen in person on the LPGA since I first started attending this tour’s events in 2005.
The Zhang/He/Uribe group left the 9th green and started walking to the scoring area inside the clubhouse. The rules guy hit the gas to catch up with Zhang (who shot -3). I thought, “oh boy, here it comes, he’s gonna drop a two-shot bomb on her and she’ll burst into tears.” Alas, there was no penalty and no waterworks, but the rules guy did stop her to give her a warning, I guess, which prompted her looper to say, “She’s working on it.” Uribe approached Team Zhang and politely threw in her two cents, saying the phrase “it’s thirty seconds” about four times. Lastly, Uribe’s caddie Ivan Galdame cornered Zhang’s caddie for more friendly advice ... “We’re working on it” was the reply to that. BTW, Zhang’s caddie this year has been Yiran Meng ... Chinese-American I assume (speaks perfect English), but this guy looked and sounded WAY too clean-cut, polished and innocent to be a looper from any tour.
I picked up the group of Robynn Ree, Rachel Rohanna and Sung Hyun Park as they approached the 18th hole, which was made even more pathetic by Rohanna teeing off with a 5-iron (strong grip with both hands). I continued on with them to the front nine where I noticed that the par-5 2nd hole (#11 in 2009) was not the same as I remember it. Back in the old days, it was a genuinely tough decision on whether or not to go for the green (protected by a brook) in two, but not today. Set at 468 yards, most of the drives I saw there were finishing between 195 and 205 to the center of a big green ... this is not a tough approach shot for the bulk of these players. Strangely, Haeji Kang hit a layup, which was like giving a up a stroke to the field IMHO.
This was my first look at Throbbin’ Robynn since the 2019 Shoprite/Acer. She ran a little hot under the hood, said “s**t” after a couple of her tee shots, but she was lady-like and whispered it.
She finally ditched all of her Southern Cal attire and went with a brand called Southcape. That’s good marketing ... name your clothes after the #1 golf course in Korea. It appears that taskmaster daddy doesn’t follow her on the course anymore. Currently games a Ping driver and Callaway X-Forged irons with a Ping bag ... plays without a glove, which I had forgotten ... had a Callaway umbrella propped over her head when she wasn’t making a stroke. The latest LPGA priority list has a medical asterisk next to her name ... for what, I don’t know, but she is NOT built like a weakling.Namdalla had only three quiet Attack Women following her as she got on a roll with birdies on #4 and #5, followed by a par on the par-3 6th. To save my feet and get some shade, I hung out between the 5th green and the 6th tee for a while. Sanna Nuutinen (with a Wilson bag) had the best tee shot I saw at #6 and made an easy birdie.
Megan Khang hit it stiff to the 5th green and when the standard bearer arrived with a red ‘6’ next to Khang’s name, I decided to stick with her group (with Andrea Lee and Ingee Chun) to the end at #9. I saw one non-Asian guy wearing a Flying Dumbo cap, that was it. Khang made the putt to go seven-under.
Khang hit another green at the par-4 7th. Then I got distracted by watching Yealimi Noh on another fairway. When I looked back at the 7th green, Khang was already walking off it. I heard no claps, what did she do? I looked to the standard bearer, who was doing an extended search into his bib pockets before finding a pair of red eights. I know someone who has been a standard bearer. I’ll have to ask him about the organizational system of the numbers inside the bib. There were no more bib searches as Khang made par on the last two holes for a 64.
The par-4 16th green was near the clubhouse and I turned my attention to the group there, Bianca Pagdanganan, Ruixin Liu and Gerina Mendoza. Bianca burned up the first 15 holes at -7, but her second shot was in the right greenside bunker. Her splash-out was lousy, leaving about a 15-foot par putt that she missed, dropping her to -6. She made par on the last two holes and had a small welcoming committee near the scorecard table, including fanboy Steve Eubanks of the LPGA brass.
There were six groups still playing when I decided to go home. I stopped at the range where Gerina Mendoza was working up a sweat after shooting 72. She was wearing a green glove, which I hadn’t noticed on the course. After further research, she has worn a green glove occasionally since 2019. Ken Green and Charley Hoffman have done green.
Range rat Amanda Doherty took out a Ping G-425 Crossover utility iron, did a couple of Keegan Bradley waggles and clubhead flips before pulling the trigger ... and did it over and over with this club. She has a loosey-goosey swing with a statue pose on her finish, which includes turning her outer right ankle partially towards her target, like Karrie Webb did. She’s short and not athletic looking, but I won’t be surprised if she outplays Florida St. teammate Frida Kinhult (ex-WAGR #1) in the pros.
