The grind of Q-school is over for the ladies and congratulations to the women that got their LPGA cards for 2013! For anyone following my blog you know that I have been following the LPGA Q-school since stage I. After stage II I reported that I would be watching four players in Stage III:

Moriya Jutanugam (Thailand) – One of the top amateur players in women’s golf.
Brooke Pancake – Winner of the 2012 Collegiate Women Sports Award for Golf.
Anya Alvarez – A player from the 2012 Big Break Atlantis.
Christina Kim – LPGA Professional that has been on tour for 10 years, is very popular, well-known on Twitter, and struggling with her game.

Note: On September 4, 2012, I wrote an overview of the LPGA Q-School.

LPGA Stage III Q-School Results

Stage III of the LPGA Q-school was held Nov 28 to Dec 2, at LPGA International in Daytona Beach, Florida. They played two courses, the Champion & Legends. The full results give the scores for all five rounds and the final positions. The top 20 get full-status on the LPGA tour for 2013 and players finishing 21-45 get conditional status (so they may get to play a few tournaments but not many). If you want to see a good list of the 20 players to secure their cards read the Golf Week Article. Here are how the four I followed finished:

Moriya Jutanugam – Tied 1st place, total score 347 (13 under par). As a winner she will forever have the title of medalist honors for Q-School! This is a good omen given that past medalists include Stacy Lewis (2012 Player of the Year). I am not surprised she won since she has been one of the top amateur players this year. But, she did not end with a solo win. Jutanugam shares the medalist honors with Rebecca Lee-Bentham (who was a rookie on the LPGA in 2012 but needed to go to Q-school to retain her LPGA status).
Brooke Pancake – Tied 11th, total Score 356 (four under par). I’ve been following Pancake since her last year in college (because I liked her name and now I am a fan of her game). It will be fun to watch her during her rookie year in 2013.
Anya Alvarez – Tied 54th, total score 363 (four over par). Unfortunately for Alvarez she did not get her tour card. Shooting 75, and 75 the first two days was not a great start and even with a 69 on day three she did not recover and shot 74, and 70 to finish out her week.
Christina Kim – Tied 39, total score 361 (one over par). Kim only had one good day during the week. Round 2 she shoot a 67 (but the rest of her scores were 72,73,74,75 – not in that order). But Kim fares better than Alvarez because of her career she will play with sponsor exemptions too. I wasn’t sure how sponsor exemptions work so I tweeted a question to Stina Sternberg, Senior Editor, Golf Digest, covering women’s golf. As Sternberg explains, Kim won a conditional card (for finishing in T39) but that does not help a lot. But she gets in to at least 6 tournaments on sponsor exemptions; and can play in USWO (United States Women’s Open) qualifiers to get into the US Women’s Open.

Twitter Conversation with Stina Sternberg

Results for Big Break Alum

Anya Alverez was not the only Big Break Alum in Stage III. There were two other players at Q-school from past Big Break shows.

Kim Welch – Tied 11th, total score 356 (4 under par). Welch was the winner on Big Break Ka’anapali in 2008 so it just shows how hard it is to make it on to the LPGA tour.
Kelly Jacques – Tied 17th, total score 357 (3 under par). However, Jacques (from Big Break Ireland 2011) had a more heartbreaking end to her Q-school. Jacques ended in seven-player tie for the final four spots in the top-20 so she had to go into a playoff. Unfortunately she did not win one of the 4 spots and only got conditional status but it is still a great accomplishment.

Final Thoughts

The LPGA Q-school is great golf drama and I wish it had been televised on the Golf Channel. I know it is expensive to televise golf but I think the final round would have been exciting for golfers to watch on TV. At a minimum, I would have liked the Golf Channel to have more video from each day. After all, the Golf Channel did show clips from the PGA Q-school on Golf Central each day. Perhaps next year the Golf Channel will give air time to LPGA Q-school. Given that the PGA is changing their process for next year and getting rid of Q-School for the PGA tour — maybe, just maybe the LPGA will get the spotlight next year.

I have been following a number of the LPGA players on twitter and it is really amazing how much information they share about their personal lives. Yes, they do promote events they are attending and products they use (or should I say endorse) but overall the tweets are not commercial. In fact, many of the ladies are quite funny.

The best tweets involve photos, food and/or drink, insider jokes, and conversations between players. Below are some examples. If you are not familiar with Twitter, I’ll do my best to explain. One thing to keep in mind is that anytime you see a twitter handle (like @ChristinaKim) just replace it with a name. Here we go….

Here is a tweet from Christina Kim that represents it all (Photo, Food, Humor – self-deprecation). Kim replied to a tweet from Nicole Hage. Hage tweeted a photo showing her recent baking efforts. Hage says “all done” (and includes a photo) and Kim replies ” You bake, and look like you….”

Now, Kim has been tweeting a lot about her workouts at the gym (which adds to this already funny tweet.) If you don’t know this…in the tweet above, there is a photo, Kim is the women in the front (that’s Michelle Wei behind her and the photo is from the Solheim Cup).

Here is a Photo of Nicole Hage. I had to add the photo because Kim said “you bake, and look like you” (so I know my readers would ask, so what does Nicole Hage look like).

Now, many of you who read my blog know I have written about slow play and how it is bad for the game. So here is a funny tweet between two players about the time it took to play a Pro-Am tournament.

As you can see, Kim’s reply comes after Pettersens’ text..5:50, Stop exaggerating. Ugh! The joke is self-evident. Hopefully, now you get how to read the tweets.

Below is a “tweet conversation” that I loved because the players are exchanging a bit of “teasing” before a match. Sophie Gustafson and Karen Stupples were scheduled to go head-to-head in match play (this was tweeted the night before the match).

And, Gustafson attached photo of her foot…to which, Karen later tweeted..love the golf tan.

Here is a great tweet from Karen Stupples regarding a rain delay.

I guess as a traveling golfer you see it all. Here is a photo tweeted from Rachel Connor.

And how about this tweet from Sophie Gustafson at an airport terminal. I can’t attach the video but here is a still of the object on the luggage carousel (yup, it’s a Heinken)

There are so many more good tweets I could show but this post would just get too long. I want to end with two that are not really “funny” like the ones about; but show the great support these players give each other (as friends) on tour.

This week, at the ShopRite tournament, the LPGA will promote the use of twitter by adding player’s twitter handles to name tags that go on the back of the caddie’s bib. Now, as a fan, I already follow my favorites. So the bibs are interesting but I’m not sure it will get me to follow more. As a marketing professional, I say “good for the LPGA for trying something new;” and I will be interested to see if it impacts individual player’s (i.e. will they get more followers.) I plan to do my own research and see if I see any spikes in followers for the players. By the way, the LPGA did tweet about the new name tags.

Finally, are you wondering which LPGA player has the most followers? Well, it is Natalie Gulbis with 115,855 followers (as of May 28 at 2:38 pm). This doesn’t surprise me given I wrote a blog post titled “Natalie Gulbis – This golfer is a savvy Marketer.”

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Tag Archives: Christina Kim

LPGA Q-School Stage III Results

LPGA Stage III Q-School Results

LPGA Stage III Q-School Results

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