Just over a month ago, I posted a somewhat speculative piece awarding Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez the title of European-Tour-2008-Player-Of-The-Year-Not-Named-Padraig.  Before a single week had passed, my runner-up choice, Sweden’s Robert Karlsson, won the Dunhill Links Championship in spectacular style, shooting a final-round 65 at St. Andrews before ultimately prevailing in a playoff, and suddenly the race became too close to call.  Though neither Karlsson nor Jimenez contended at last weekend’s season-ending Volvo Masters at Valderrama, Karlsson’s tie for 32nd was enough to secure a €37,500 payday, which in turn clinched the top spot in the 2008 European Order of Merit by some 273,000 Euros over Padraig Harrington, with Lee Westwood finishing 3rd and Jimenez claiming 4th.  In the end, Karlsson entered 23 official E Tour events, Jimenez 26, with each man winning twice.  But Karlsson’s 12 top-10 finishes (including an impressive nine top-fours), his three top-10s in the year’s first three Majors, and his Order of Merit crown must surely be enough to nose the towering Swede into the top spot.

And now it’s official because as of this Thursday, some seven week’s shy of the new year, the E Tour kicks off its 2009 schedule in Shanghai.

Highly logical, that.

But if my timing was a little off in prematurely selecting Jimenez, I did considerably better two weeks ago in singling out 17-year-old Japanese phenom Ryo Ishikawa for attention.  A Japan Tour winner as a 15-year-old amateur (!) in 2007, Ishikawa had just beaten his chest a bit with a 2nd-place finish at the Japan Open (four behind Shingo Katayama) and was generally showing the sort of early career form that had earned him the inevitable (and calamatously unoriginal) moniker “the Japanese Tiger Woods.”  Following being noted here, Ishikawa closed with a pair of weekend 67s to tie for 12th at the Bridgestone Open before reaching cruising speed at last weekend’s ABC Open, where a closing 69 (including clutch birdies at the 15th and 16th) lifted him to his first triumph as a professional, edging veteran Keiichiro Fukabori by one.  With the win, Ishikawa climbed to 4th place in the Japan Order of Merit, while also serving notice that he figures as a force to be reckoned with – both at home and, eventually, abroad – for many years to come.

And then there is the extreme opposite end of the spectrum, where soon-to-be-retired (maybe) Annika Sorenstam closed with a sparkling, eight-birdie 65 to win the LET’s Suzhou Taihu Ladies Open, defeating homestanding Li Ying Ye in sudden death in China.  The victory, Sorenstam’s 14th in Europe and 90th overall, may not have come against elite competition, but if, in the end, it ultimately represents her final career triumph, she can certainly be said to have gone out in real style.

I’m thinking we haven’t really seen the last of Annika yet. But just in case...

Bravo!