Lorena Ochoa's seventh career victory on Sunday at the Corona Morelia Championship earned her the $150,000 winner's check and brought her season earnings total to $2,124,122. She becomes just the second player in LPGA Tour history to earn more than $2 million in a season, after Annika Sorenstam first hit the mark in November 2001 and has repeated every year since.
Ochoa has led the ADT Official Money List for most of the season and now outdistances Karrie Webb by $250,369 as Webb has cashed $1,873,753 this season, while Sorenstam is sitting in third place with $1,769,408. Ochoa has now won four times this season and is tied with Webb for most wins. Ochoa has also recorded three additional top-10 finishes, along with the lowest scoring average on Tour with 69.3636.
STATUS SET: As the final full-field event on the 2006 LPGA Tour schedule, the Corona Morelia Championship was the last chance for players to nail down one of the 90 exempt spots on the 2007 LPGA Tour. Johanna Head capitalized on her tie for 16th and $12,688 paycheck to advance from 93rd to 89th and into exempt status territory.
The top 90 players on the ADT Official Money List are now guaranteed exempt status for the 2007 LPGA Tour season. Players ranked 91 to 125 on the list are guaranteed non-exempt status. While that secures their partial 2007 Tour card, they still have a chance to compete in the LPGA Q-School finals on Nov. 29-Dec. 3 at LPGA International in Daytona Beach, Fla., and improve their status.
ON TO THE FINALS: 35 players in the second and last LPGA Sectional Qualifying Tournament have advanced to the Q-School finals, led by Angie Hill of Canton, Ohio, and the College of Charleston in South Carolina, and Nontaya Srisawang of Thailand.
The top 30 finishers and ties from each of the two sectional qualifiers will join current LPGA Tour members attempting to improve their status and the players who finished sixth through 15th on the final 2006 Duramed Futures Tour money list at the Final Qualifying Tournament.
IT'S OFFICIAL: On the strength of one win and six top-10 finishes this year, Seon-Hwa Lee clinched the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award in September after her tie for 39th at the Longs Drugs Challenge. But with the conclusion of the Corona Morelia Championship, Lee has officially won the Rookie of the Year award.
Lee didn't play the Corona Morelia Championship, but finished with 1,009 points, which was 204 points ahead of Julieta Granada, who earned 80 points with her second runner-up finish of the season for a total of 805 points. Lee is the fifth player from South Korea to win the award in the last nine years.
TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT: World No. 1 Annika Sorenstam will make her second appearance as a guest on NBC's "The Tonight Show" on Monday. Sorenstam is in southern California for the Samsung World Championship in the Palm Springs area, where she will defend her 2005 championship later this week.
Monday also marks Sorenstam's 36th birthday, so her interview with Jay Leno will kick off what could be a memorable week, as she will be going for her 70th career LPGA victory at the Samsung World Championship, an event she could win for the sixth time.
Sorenstam also was a guest on "The Tonight Show" in April 2003, prior to her participation in the PGA Tour's Bank of America Colonial.
REPRESENTING WENDY'S: Juli Inkster, Cristie Kerr and Natalie Gulbis will represent the LPGA Tour in the 2006 Wendy's 3-Tour Challenge, which will be played on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at Reflection Bay Golf Club, Lake Las Vegas Resort in Henderson, Nev. Inkster, Kerr and Gulbis will be joined by Champions Tour stars Jay Haas, Tom Kite and Craig Stadler, and PGA Tour players Tom Lehman, Zach Johnson and Stewart Cink.
The Wendy's 3-Tour Challenge, which features three players from the three tours matched against each other in competitive threesomes, was started in 1992 and benefits the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The event has raised nearly $22 million for the national charity over the previous 14 years. ABC Sports will televise delayed coverage of the event on Saturday, Dec. 23 and Sunday, Dec. 24. The Champions Tour won the event last year, while the LPGA last won in 2004.
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