NEWSFLASH: Yani Bitten by Kobra!

While my predictions for the Northern Trust Open didn't start out all that great -- Charl Schwartzel is -2 (5 off the lead) and Charles Howell III is +2 -- Lydia Ko wasted no time beginning her chase of the Rolex World Number One.

Yani Tseng played alongside Lydia in the first and second rounds. Yani started her year with a promising -5 in her first round.

Lydia countered with a -10 in a round that included 3 bogeys.

As I write this Yani and Lydia are well into their second round (they've finished 65 holes). Yani is currently -6 and Lydia is -14.

In Wednesday's post about the possible contenders for Yani's throne this year, I mentioned Lydia, Stacy Lewis, and So Yeon Ryu as my most likely challengers. Stacy sits at -3 after 2 rounds and So Yeon is -1 after 1 round (she hasn't started her second round yet). Both may be a bit rusty; in fact, Stacy said that she hadn't played in 2 months. (I assume she meant competitive rounds, not practice rounds.)

But I'll tell you who isn't rusty. Jiyai Shin is at -14 after 2 rounds and Mariajo Uribe is at -15 after 16 holes in her second round. (So Uribe is leading at the time of this writing.)

And Jiyai is #8 in the world rankings, about 3.6 points behind Yani. I guess I'll have to add her to my list.

I know it's early in the year but it's not looking so good for Yani right now.

The photos of (in order) Lydia Ko, Mariajo Uribe, and Jiyai Shin came from player pages at the LPGA.com website.