Creamer favourite at Corning Classic
IN: News | LPGA | LPGA Corning Classic (2008) | Preview | by Bruce Young | 21 May 2008
The LPGA Corning Classic gets underway on Thursday at its traditional venue, the Corning Country Club in Corning in New York State. It will be the 30th staging of the event since Penny Pulz first took the title back in 1979.
The defending champion at the Tom Winton designed layout is Young Kim, who won her first LPGA Tour event when she defeated Paula Creamer and Mi Hyun Kim by three shots. The winner in 2006 was Hee Won Han, who defeated Meena Lee in a playoff.
The field in 2008 is missing the two leading players of the LPGA, Lorena Ochoa and previous winner Annika Sorenstam but the LPGA Tour’s only other multiple winner in 2008, Paula Creamer will play and given her current form she will surely start as the favourite. Creamer not only finished runner up in 2007 in her only time to the event, she has been a two time winner on the LPGA in 2008 along with a runner up and third placed finish.
Jeong Jang must surely break through again soon. She has been twice second and once third this season and at her last start in Virginia she finished runner up to Annika Sorenstam, albeit seven shots in arrears. Jang has regularly played well at the Corning Classic and in the form she is in should challenge Creamer, although there is a little concern about a wrist injury that has bothered her of late.
Mi Hyun Kim is in the field this week after withdrawing at the Michelob event after an opening 69 but then suffered from knee injury in round two. If she is over that and can recapture her Kraft Nabisco form she stands a chance to improve on last year’s runner up finish.
There have been enough encouraging signs of late for the 2006 winner, Hee Won Han, to be considered a chance to do well while for impressive rookie, Na Yeon Choi, this week offers a chance for the multiple Korean LPGA winner to do better than her best LPGA placing of 5th. In Bee Park is yet another Korean on the verge of LPGA Tour success and has shown enough this season to do well in this slightly weaker field this week.
Previous winner Laura Diaz started the season off well and although she has not been quite as sharp in recent weeks she has not been all bad and might do well on a golf course she obviously enjoys.
The Australians in the field are Katherine Hull, Wendy Doolan, Michelle Ellis, Sarah-Jane Kenyon and Anna Rawson.
