What A Week It Was

Some parts of the LPGA future, it seems, just can't wait to happen. On a week in which commissioner Carolyn Bivens said the tour was assuming ownership of the LPGA Championship in 2010, a likable and powerfully talented 19-year-old rookie from Taiwan, Yani Tseng, won the McDonald's-sponsored event to become the youngest major winner since, well, last year when 18-year-old Morgan Pressel captured the Kraft Nabisco Championship.

Tseng became the first rookie to win an LPGA major since Se Ri Pak took the McDonald's 10 years ago, dispatching Maria Hjorth with a birdie on the fourth hole of sudden death. It could well be that both Tseng and Bivens provided a peek into the future of the LPGA.

A tournament that was supposed to hinge on whether Annika Sorenstam could stop Lorena Ochoa's march to the Grand Slam instead became the unveiling of Tseng, who now joins the tour's growing list of teenage winners such as Pressel, who finished T-6 last week, and Paula Creamer (T-10). From tee to green, Ochoa and Sorenstam played almost flawlessly at Bulle Rock GC in Havre de Grace, Md. It was on the greens they had problems.

Ochoa putted for birdie or eagle 60 times in 72 holes and Sorenstam 59 times, the last a 12-footer on No. 18 that would have put her in the clubhouse at 12-under 276, the score at which Tseng and Hjorth tied. But while the two playoff participants each had 55 putts on the weekend, Ochoa and Sorenstam needed 63.

"I played very well today, I just didn't convert," Sorenstam said. It was a sentiment Ochoa understood. The 12-footer she made for birdie on the final hole to finish at 11 under par along with Sorenstam was almost a cruelly ironic joke. "I hit the ball really good with my irons, gave myself birdie opportunities and couldn't make any putts," she said.

With the tour's two top players beginning the final round tied at 10 under par, two strokes behind 54-hole leader Jee Young Lee (who would shoot a final-round 78 and leave the course in tears), and a stroke behind Hjorth, the stage was set for a tussle between Ochoa, trying for her third consecutive major title, and Sorenstam, trying for her 11th career major. Instead the outcome was decided by Tseng's five-foot birdie after Hjorth missed from 15 feet the second time they visited No. 18 in the playoff.

Hjorth, in fact, had a 10-footer to win on the 72nd hole but misread the putt. "I hit a really good putt, and it just didn't break as I wanted," said the 34-year-old long-hitting Swede. Laura Diaz, who finished at 278, hung tough until missing a short par putt on No. 17 and finished fifth, two strokes behind.

"I [can't] believe it," said Tseng. "I just won a major. I'm a rookie. Everything just came so fast." Things came fast, but they also were well planned by Ernie Huang, a Taiwanese living in California who helps golfers from his homeland play in the United States.

"She wasn't nervous this morning," Huang said. "I told her I had a 6:20 [p.m.] flight and she said, 'Maybe you should change your flight.' I got it. I knew what she meant. Then she told me, 'The winner is not going to come from the last group.' " Tseng played in the next-to-the-last group with Ochoa and Diaz, in front of Lee, Hjorth and Sorenstam.

Tseng's victory is no surprise to those who have watched her play. She defeated Michelle Wie in the final of the 2004 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links. The next year she knocked off Pressel to win the North & South Women's Amateur. Tseng turned pro last year, winning tournaments on the Asian and Canadian tours. Tseng got her LPGA card last fall by finishing sixth at Q school.

Twice this year Tseng had chances to win, finishing second at the MasterCard Classic in Mexico, limping home with a 74 Sunday, and second again at the Ginn Open, where her closing 71 was her highest round of the week by two strokes. "I learned from those experiences how important it is to be patient," she said.

Tseng applied that patience Sunday, erasing a bogey on No. 13 with a birdie on the next hole and rebounding from an errant tee shot on the par-5 15th to save par after having 205 yards left for her third shot. Two over par through 11 holes of the first round, Tseng made only two bogeys over the final 65 holes. The win, worth 300 points, vaulted her past Na Yeon Choi in their runaway duel (Tour Talk, May 23) for rookie of the year, 783 points to 670.