Though form held nicely at April’s Kraft Nabisco Championship (where world number one Lorena Ochoa emerged victorious), it is difficult not to notice the youthfulness of the LPGA Tour’s two most recent Major champions, Taiwan’s 19-year-old Yani Tseng (who claimed the LPGA Championship) and last week’s U.S. Open winner, 19-year-old Inbee Park of Korea.  And while in each case the Major title was the player’s first official LPGA victory, neither young woman could in any way be called a fluke; Tseng came into the LPGA Championship ranked 25th in the world (with two 2nd-place finishes already on her 2008 ledger) and Park arrived at the Open ranked 42nd, with two top 10s in her last three starts, and an earlier 9th-place finish at the Kraft Nabisco.  Though both were helped by the sub-par play of Ochoa and world number two Annika Sorenstam, their victories were impressively achieved – and likely will not be either player’s last.

But this run of youthful success got me to thinking…

Whenever some early teen Morgan Pressel or Michelle Wie pops up in a U.S. Open, or qualifies into a regular LPGA event, we inevitably hear some scoffing, some suggestion that only a perceived inferiority of the women’s game in general allows such prodigies to successfully compete.  And on the surface, such thinking might seem logical – for when was the last time a teenager proved themselves capable of seriously competing on the PGA Tour?

But I think such downing of the LPGA misses one very important point: In terms of pure physical strength, the fully matured, adult male holds an enormous advantage over, say, a talented 16-year-old, whose power game – not just off the tee but also out of the rough – lags well behind because of it.  Women, on the other hand, are by nature less physically strong than men, thus there is far less muscular development to take place throughout their teens and early 20s, making the physical gap between the 13 and 30-year-old female vastly less than the physical gap between corresponding males.  And this, I believe, is the main reason for young women being able to compete at the highest level significantly earlier than young men.

But this disparity in physical strength raises, for me at least, one more question.

The USGA is famous for setting up U.S. Open courses with narrower fairways and deeper rough (among other things), and the Women’s Open, though tricked up to a lesser degree than the men’s, is no exception.  But as modern equipment mandates more and more severe setups so that the USGA’s beloved “par as the standard of excellence” remains viable, the element of luck seems to grow ever greater, and I wonder: Is it strictly coincidence that of the last six Women’s Open winners, three claimed the Open as their first-ever LPGA title?

In 2003, Hilary Lunke, a former collegiate star at Stanford, defeated Kelly Robbins and Angela Stanford in an 18-hole playoff at Pumpkin Ridge, an occasion which represented not only Lunke’s only LPGA Tour win but also her only career finish better than 15th (!) in what to date amounts to 119 career starts.  Two years later at Cherry Hills, it was little-known (save for her name) Birdie Kim holing a long bunker shot at the 72nd to secure a two-shot victory over amateurs Pressel and Brittany Lang – and with the exception of a 2nd-place finish at last year’s Tournament of Champions (a short field event), Kim hasn’t come close to winning again in America.  And now we have former junior star Inbee Park, considerably less of a fluke than Lunke or Kim certainly, but, with nary a professional win worldwide prior to the Open, something of a longshot nonetheless.  Further of the world elite, only fourth-ranked Paula Creamer was seriously in contention at Interlachen, and then only until a disappointing final-round 78 derailed her hopes.

So does the USGA’s Women’s Open setup disproportionally enhance the chances of having a fluke winner?

The fact that Hall-of-Famers like Karrie Webb, Annika Sorenstam and Juli Inskter have also claimed the title in recent years could suggest otherwise, but I would hasten to point out that on the LPGA Tour, the elite win a far greater percentage of the time than do, say, the top five players not named Tiger on the men’s side.

So my gut feeling is yes…but I could be wrong.