By Ron Sirak
Photos By J.D. Cuban
April 4, 2008
Here are a couple of things you need to know about the 2008 version of Lorena Ochoa: Already a long hitter, she is noticeably -- almost scarily -- longer. Although a few putts got away from her at Superstition Mountain, especially on the weekend, she won the Safeway International by seven strokes with a calm and confidence she has not always displayed under pressure. To say that someone who already has 19 victories at age 26 appears to have improved a game that last year won eight times seems silly, but that is clearly the case. If this was the swan song of this event played in the Phoenix area since 1980 -- Safeway is gone as title sponsor, leaving the tournament's future twisting in the desert wind -- it went out with the LPGA's best player providing a tour de force.
Protecting a one-stroke lead over Jee Young Lee and Angela Stanford going into the final round, Ochoa slipped into a tie with Stanford after a bogey on the third hole but never surrendered the lead. Then, when she rolled in a 15-foot birdie putt on No. 8, it triggered what has become Ochoa's calling card -- a birdie barrage, this time six over the final 11 holes for a closing 66 and a 22-under-par 266 that shattered the tournament record on this course by four strokes. Lee made a seven-foot birdie putt on the final hole to finish second at 273 with Minea Blomqvist, who closed with a 67, another stroke behind. Stanford struggled to a 74 to finish T-4.
Ochoa's birdie-birdie finish on the front nine gave her a three-stroke cushion. It was a driver to 25 feet on the 310-yard 14th, however, that stood as the exclamation point between two other birdies on 13 and 15, and ended all doubts about the outcome, pushing her margin to six strokes and serving as a summary of how completely Ochoa overwhelmed the Prospector Course.
"It's amazing how easily the birdies come when you stop trying to make them happen and just let them happen," her caddie, Dave Brooker, said as they walked off the 15th green, where she had hit a sand-wedge approach to two feet, and headed to the 16th, a hole that broke her heart -- and in retrospect helped make her the player she is today -- with a double bogey in 2005 as she squandered a four-stroke lead with three holes to play.
"I learned a few times the hard way," Ochoa said. "Not only [here in 2005] but the U.S. Open [that same year] and the Kraft Nabisco [in 2006] and a few other tournaments. That makes me who I am today. I [wouldn't] change that for anything. It doesn't mean I'm not going to struggle again, or have very bad times, or cry again. But I'm just enjoying my moment."
And what a moment it is. Ochoa has won two of her three starts this year (an 11-stroke romp at the HSBC Women's Champions in Singapore to go with last week's runaway), and 16 of her last 48 beginning with the Takefuji Classic in April 2006. Ochoa has tripled the win total of Annika Sorenstam at the same age and could well surpass the quick career starts of Se Ri Pak, who had 21 wins when she was 26, and Karrie Webb, who had 23.
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