Cherry Hills Village – Do you want to know about pressure? How about heading into the final round of the U.S. Women’s Open, three shots behind the leader, and hearing from a legend about the need to represent the entire nation?
“On Sunday morning, Judy Bell came up to me and said, ‘We’re in Massachusetts, it’s the Fourth of July and an American is going to win the championship,”‘ Meg Mallon recalled Monday. “I looked at the tee sheets, and I think I was the only American playing in the final groups.
“I said, ‘I think she must be talking about me.”‘
Mallon indeed overtook Jennifer Rosales to win her second Open last year, bringing a smile to Bell, the former USGA president and Colorado Springs resident – and to virtually everyone at the Orchards Golf Club.
Perhaps the best-liked player on the LPGA Tour, Mallon tied an Open record by shooting a final-round 65, holding off Annika Sorenstam by two strokes.
Mallon, in town to help Cherry Hills Country Club kick off the final countdown to the USGA’s 60th women’s Open championship, will defend her title next month, hoping to follow the same formula that led her last year.
A winner of 18 LPGA events, entering the 2004 Open, Mallon was in the midst of, for her, an indifferent year. Although she had had a second-place finish, there was also a missed cut and four other finishes outside the top 25.
The last was a tie for 29th in the Wegmans Rochester Classic the week before the Open. In South Hadley, Mass., Mallon opened with a 2-over-par 73, but came back with rounds of 69, 67 and 65 – the lowest for a women’s Open champion.
The victory started an impressive run in which Mallon won three times in five weeks.
This season, Mallon has two missed cuts and hasn’t finished better than 26th in her six events.
“Last year was a really slow start for me, then it kicked into that five-week span that was so much fun,” she said. “This year it’s been a struggle, one I haven’t had in quite a while.”
In June, Mallon may take some measure of comfort from being in relatively familiar surroundings. Her coach, Mike McGetrick, is based at Green Valley Ranch; while paying a number of visits already this year trying to iron out the kinks in her game, Mallon has stopped at Cherry Hills to get in some work. The veteran also said she feels comfortable on courses with smaller greens and tight fairways – which is what the field of 156 players will face in Cherry Hills Village.
The course, which will play at a 6,749-yard, par-71 for the Open, is already a very stiff challenge, particularly in the rough, which will be grown out to 3 or 3 1/2 inches. Already gnarly, the thicket still has about five more weeks to grow even more diabolical.
Mentioning the difficulty of trying to extricate a golf ball from the jungle only seems to bring sardonic smiles to the faces of USGA officials.
“It’s just about where we want it to be,” senior director Tom Meeks, the man responsible for setting up the course for the championship, said Monday.
“I’ve played Cherry Hills, but never under Mr. Meeks’ standards,” Mallon said. “It’s going to be a difficult golf course for me.”
And for everyone else who tees it up.
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
