Nicely Done

By John Strege
Photos By Scott Halleran/Getty Images April 25, 2008

Surely the other LPGA players would prefer to dislike Lorena Ochoa for removing first place from the options available to them when she is in the field these days. But actually disliking her? That seems to be another option closed to them.

A woman who needs no introduction, Ochoa nonetheless approached a wide-eyed rookie, Yani Tseng, and introduced herself last week. Veterans like her, too, to wit Helen Alfredsson sneaking up behind her and playfully poking her while she was in the middle of a telephone interview with The New York Times.

There is no more accommodating, agreeable superstar in contemporary golf, one who is ruthless only in her execution on the golf course. She is killing them with kindness. "She's such a nice person," Juli Inkster said. "You can tell she considers golf not who she is."

It seems inconceivable that Ochoa actually may be a better person than she is a golfer, given the way she has been dismantling the competition. Last week, she won the Ginn Open at the Reunion (Fla.) Resort by three strokes, her fourth straight victory (in four consecutive weeks, no less), equaling an LPGA record she shares with Mickey Wright, Kathy Whitworth and Annika Sorenstam, gilded company with which she so obviously belongs. It was, as well, her fifth victory in six starts in 2008 and 22nd of a career that already qualifies her for the LPGA Hall of Fame.

"It's one of the best runs, if not the best, in the history of the LPGA," another Hall of Famer, Beth Daniel, said. "Basically, she's qualified for the Hall of Fame in 3½ years. And she's not just winning, she's winning by a lot. Even Annika [Sorenstam] didn't win by the margins she's winning by."

Ochoa has won by 11, 7, 5, 11 and 3 -- 37 strokes better than the collective runners-up, which denotes less a competition than a coronation. Her latest one did not qualify as a rout only because of the efforts of Tseng, a Taiwanese 19-year-old who refused to wilt in the heat Ochoa has been applying to women's golf.

Having set the course record with a second-round 64, Tseng birdied three of her first five holes Sunday to wrest the lead from Ochoa momentarily. Following an eagle at 10, she was within a shot of the lead before her putter began misfiring on the back nine.

Yet it was Tseng's second runner-up finish in six starts this year and her fourth top-10 in seven LPGA starts as a professional. It was also a portent that this won't be their last tussle. On 18 Sunday, Ochoa told Tseng that she was "going to see her many Sundays." But not the next Sunday. Ochoa, pleading fatigue, won't play in this week's Stanford International Pro-Am and will return for the SemGroup Championship next week in her quest to match the LPGA record for consecutive victories: five, achieved by Sorenstam in 2004-05, and Nancy Lopez in 1978. Part of her charm is that she won't concede herself a victory. Ochoa, all of 26, takes nothing for granted, least of all success in a game that tends to rebuke complacency. From Florida she was heading back to Mexico for three days of family fun, before returning to work on the practice tee.

"I'll always be thankful for what I have right now," she said. "I feel that it's been a blessing. But I know that my time will come. It's just the way life is. I'm just trying to enjoy my moment, and I would like to enjoy it for a long time."

Her joy does not diminish even in the wake of a bad shot, an endangered species from her swing these days. "No, I hit a lot of bad shots," she insisted Saturday, "but you just need to laugh about them and be able to have a smile on your face and just keep moving. I think I hit five drivers to the right today, missed a few fairways, but it's all about the attitude you have. I was able to come back and play well."