Many thanks for putting Miyazato ahead of Wie on the list. Wie had two chances to win last year – missed one – made one. The rest was smoke and mirrors.

What has happened to Momoko Ueda ? She looked like a sure thing her rookie year. I figured her to be a perennial top 10 or even top 5, but she hasn’t gotten her spark back.

How the heck did Natalie Gulbis make this list ? If it’s purely window dressing, fine, but her game hasn’t gotten any better, and the back problems you mentioned just don’t seem to want to go away.

But Gulbis was #40 on the money list last year. She has topped that million dollar mark once in her career and that was 5 years ago.

Wie’s top 10’s were from spots out of contention. Check her Sunday scores.

I’m hoping Choi has a big year – watching her swing is poetry.

Hope you’re right on Ueda. That’s a LOAD of talent.

I don’t understand the anti-Natalie sentiment here. Look at her stats from last season. There are plenty of courses that favor precision players. You don’t need to be a top tier player to win once, or even twice, on the LPGA (my list of 2-timers, I mean 2-time winners, comes out at midnight, so you’ll see what I mean).

Here’s another way to look at it: who would you put ahead of Natalie? Certainly not Castrale, right? Well, check out the rest of the list over at my place. I can see demoting Natalie and Nicole out of the contenders category, but not putting anyone ahead of them as more likely to win in 2010.

She has obviously only started to live up to her potential as a player.

Physically, she has the tools and the game to win and win often. Where she is lacking, IMO, is in the mental toughness department — and on the pro tours, that can be the difference between winning and losing.

I have long held that by skipping juniors’ and college golf, Wie missed out on learning how to master her own emotions in the heat of battle. She has instead chosen to learn all of that on the pro tours. There, she is facing accomplished golfers week after week, and despite her physical abilities, has suffered on the course because they have out-thought and out-self-controlled her. That, coupled with the fact that she was isolated socially from her peers due to her age and to some degree, her family, have made it a tough go for her so far.

2009 saw the beginnings of change for Michelle, and she should be a much stronger player this coming year. She is an intelligent young woman who is learning what she needs to know. She will continue to learn, and improve in that area.

Her only problem at this point in time aside from gaining more experience is the limitations on her time thanks to the rigor of her education at Stanford. I applaud her and her parents for her attending Stanford, as in the long run the experience will be beneficial for her. In the short term, however, it may limit what she can accomplish on the course.

I don’t think she’s mentally weak at all — in fact, I’d say she’s one of the toughest on any tour. If you really want to get good, fast, you have to play with players who are better than you, and that means you’re going to get it handed to you hard and often. I personally applaud her for taking the hard road; I think it’s made her better and tougher. The fact that her game went in the toilet (largely because of a poor decision to play through injuries) and she still brought it back when so many others have been crushed by one defeat (Tony Jacklin, for example) is proof positive that she is as tough as they come.

I agree that she’s been “strategically lacking” (let’s get PC here, ok?) but that’s not the same thing as mental weakness. I don’t claim to know all the ins-and-outs of Michelle’s relationship to her parents, but I think we need to remember that “good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” I think she recognizes that she made some bad decisions, and that has made her willing to listen to the people who can really help her now. Give her another year, maybe two on Tour and she’ll have the strategy part down. But that personal toughness — that’s what I think her teen years have given to her, and I think that’s going to pay off big time going forward.

Look, Ai Miyazato certainly learned to win on the JLPGA (13 times before she joined the LPGA), as did Momoko Ueda. The issue, though, is learning how to win on the LPGA. It took Ai-sama most of 4 full seasons and Momo-chan still hasn’t followed up on her non-member win as she enters her 3rd full season.

With 13 chances to win in ‘09 on the LPGA and JLPGA, Ai-sama certainly didn’t make the most of her opportunities. Bad execution at the Samsung, when she went for the closing par-5 in 2 and yanked it into the drink, opened the door for Na Yeon Choi, who had been falling apart during the middle of the final round. I’ve disagreed with those who argued it was bad strategy on Ai-sama’s part—after all, she won at Evian going for a par 5 in 2. I wouldn’t call it a lack of mental toughness, either. Sometimes a bad shot is just a bad shot.

The thing about both Michelle and Ai-sama that I like is that they’re both likely to put themselves in contention quite often in 2010. They’ll both learn how to better execute under that kind of pressure. Should be fun to watch (for those who have GC)!

Add to that excuse city, O’ my wrist, O’ my akle, O’ my heat stroke, O’ my parents et al on and on. JMHO….jumpn/progolf