Under-Par Party
The Prospector Course played soft and easy. Just ask Angela Sanford. She fired a 10-under 62 to take a three-stroke lead at the Safeway International
With a great start, Sanford is looking for her second career LPGA title.
Related Links
SUPERSTITION MOUNTAIN, Ariz. -- What do you get when you take perfectly conditioned fairways, soft greens that putt as pure as possible, place the pins in come-hither positions, then remove all but the mildest breeze and trim the rough back to the length of Drew Carey's crew cut? More red ink on the Safeway International leader board than on the Bear Stearns books.
The Prospector Course at Superstition Mountain yielded pure gold for just about anyone who bothered to tee it up Thursday. And no one mined more ore in the first round than Angela Stanford. The Texan who plays out of Shady Oaks CC in Fort Worth fashioned a tidy little 62 that would have impressed even Ben Hogan, the demanding little man who used to hold court at Shady Oaks.
Stanford, whose lone LPGA victory was in the 2003 ShopRite Classic a week before she finished second in the U.S. Women's Open to Hilary Lunke in a playoff, flirted with bogey only once as she went out in 30. Perhaps the oddest thing about her round was that when she walked onto the 18th green with an eagle putt that could have given her a 61 there was not even a ripple of applause and no one would have begrudged her shouting out, "Hey, I'm tearing it up here."
If this is to keep from becoming a birdie barrage of record proportions one of four things need to happen. Either tournament officials have to figure out how to grow about four inches of rough overnight, some serious wind needs to come rushing out of the Arizona desert, the tournament committee needs to engage in a first-class game of hide-the-pin or it needs to stop watering the greens. But with a major in the offing next week at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, what's wrong with a little fun this week? And if this does turn out to be the swan song of this event -- Safeway is done as sponsor after this year -- then make it an aria that shatters every glass in the hospitality tent.
The Safeway International is a lot like what the Doral tournament used to be in the pre-World Golf Championship days of the PGA Tour. This is the place where the LPGA season starts to get serious. After playing two events in Hawaii and one each in Singapore and Mexico, this is the first gathering at which all the big names show up in the same place. All of the top 75 from last year's money list are here -- and they played like it.
Want to know what it takes to shoot a 10-under-par 62 -- besides exquisite ballstriking and a putter than can't miss? Something a little bit magical that could be best described as the organic confluence of events that unfolds when an athlete wanders into that most elusive of places: The Zone.
On the first hole, Stanford made an up-and-down from the left bunker to a short side pin she called "a Nick par." I beg your pardon? "That's for my friends back at Shady Oaks," she explained. "We got this guy named Nick who makes up-and-downs from trash cans." It was almost as if that par save whispered the omen of what was to come, and Stanford listened.
