I voted for Fudoh b/c she’s been seriously struggling in 2008 since her 1st win very early in the season and b/c of the significance of her career winnings record.

geez – do you go with Creamer – she beat the strongest field of the four and dropped a nice little 60 on the course Thursday…but struggled the rest of the way and had to hang on for the win ?

Pettersen had a huge final round to run down the field in Ireland

Fudoh has to be thrilled to get back on track

but Vicky Hurst destroyed the field on the Duramed Tour and cemented her LPGA Tour card for next year – not the toughest course or field – but she dominated the way she should’ve. I think I’ll give her the nod.

(psst – hey Michelle – if YOU had taken your head out of your rear end and played some Futures Tour events – YOU might be in a similar position AND might have figured out how to win – enjoy the fish-n-chips)

How about this – she’s listening…

(from the Duramed Futures Tour web site – after a pretty good interview with Kim Welch)

It’s a good time for Duramed FUTURES Tour rookie VICKY HURST to test herself against the field at this week’s LPGA State Farm Classic. Hurst takes last week’s win – her fourth of the 2008 season – into the LPGA’s tournament in Springfield, Ill. She earned the LPGA State Farm Classic exemption in mid-June by winning the Duramed FUTURES Tour’s only major championship, the Michelob ULTRA Duramed FUTURES Players Championship, in Decatur, Ill.

ok ok – maybe she’s not listening to my advice – I just like the timing. :-)

Fudoh used to be the top-ranked Japanese player in the world, back when the Rolex Rankings 1st came out and she was having Tiger-like seasons on the JLPGA (6 straight seasons as #1 on the money list). This year she won early but really struggled since then (as in several finishes outside the top 30 and recently 2 missed cuts in a row before righting the ship last week with a T3)—continuing her struggles over the previous 2 years as other JLPGA stars have stepped up. So I think this win is big-time redemption for her, on top of it breaking 2 records at once.

Here’s her bio page: http://www.lpga.or.jp/profile/profile.asp?cd=539&yyyy=2008

I’m super-excited about Vicky Hurst, too, but remember that Amy Yang is #3 on the LET money list but has only managed to make about $34K in the very few LPGA events she’s gotten into. So Futures Tour win #4 for Hurst is certainly a big deal, but it’s too soon to tell what it means. We know Fudoh is staying on the JLPGA and what her win means for that tour while Vicky’s win is all about next year.

As for Paula and Suzann, both had impressive wins against much stronger fields than on the FT, but both were (I’m sorry to say) in “B”-list events, or at best tune-ups for the Evian Masters and the Women’s British Open. Good to get, but not history-making like Fudoh’s.

did Fudoh ever say why she didn’t take a shot at the LPGA after so many years in top over there ?

I just updated her wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Fudoh) to reflect her latest feat, but am still looking for her reasoning for limiting her international play almost exclusively to the majors.

I’m sure there are all kinds of interviews and documentaries with juicy details, but only in Japanese….

But she’s a hell of a lot bigger than Kenny Perry! 44 career wins vs. 12, leading money winner in her tour’s history, plays majors…. Better to imagine if Karrie Webb never left Australia or Se Ri Pak never left South Korea. Her years of total dominance on the JLPGA almost perfectly coincided with Annika’s on the LPGA—intriguing to wonder if she would have had as good or better a career on the LPGA as them or Ayako Okamoto.

Her reasons must be popular ones, though, as it took Japanese players a decade younger than her to make the leap. So far Miyazato and Ueda have followed Okamoto’s path; I wonder how many in the coming years will decide on Fudoh’s—

http://mlyhlss.blogspot.com/2008/06/top-japanese-under-22-golfers-facing.html

—especially if the Japanese economy fully recovers from its post-bubble blues and the U.S. economy continues to struggle.

I’d still like to hear in her own words why the money and competition on the LPGA weren’t enough of a draw….

TC – just looking at that billion yen mark – if someone came over and handed a bank a check for a billion yen – they would have a bit under $4.5 million – but her dollars are spread out over 10 1/2 years. In just 3 more years, Annika has earned more than $22 million just on the LPGA tour. Ochoa has a little more thant $10 million in just four years.

She must have some huge endorsements to pass on at least taking a shot at the LPGA.

I got $9.5M when I did the conversion at Yahoo! Finance. There was a time when a dollar went for less than 100 yen (it’s pretty dan close now!), but probably not often during her career—more likely in the 120-150 yen per dollar range. Come to think of it, she hit her mid-teenage years as the Japanese bubble economy burst, so she definitely took a financial hit by staying in Japan. On the other hand, with endorsements plus winnings she was definitely not hurting money-wise. My experience in Japan was that things I tend to consider luxuries here are pretty much standard there (and relatively inexpensive outside Tokyo if you know where to look), so I’d have to guess her standard of living has been pretty high. If she wasn’t doing much international travelling, it wouldn’t really matter how high the yen went against the dollar, either.

Whatever the exact conversion, it suggests that the cultural and other factors Diane mentioned were more important to her that the lost opportunity to make more money.

But I still wonder what her own reasoning has been and is….