Rancho Mirage, Calif. – Up until a year ago, major championships on the LPGA tour were thought to belong to Annika Sorenstam, with someone else occasionally sneaking in to register an upset. Then, after Lorena Ochoa had a breakthrough 2006, moving to the verge of supplanting the Swede as the world’s top player, the thinking was there would be a two-woman rivalry for the sport’s biggest titles.
But, in the opening major of 2007, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, that notion has been set on its ear.
“There are 100 players out here and 100 players who can win this tournament,” Meaghan Francella said.
Well, maybe 98. Sorenstam shot an opening-round 75 and has never been a factor here at Mission Hills Country Club. And, during Saturday’s third round, Ochoa, who could have moved to the top of the world rankings with a victory, suffered her own implosion, taking a quadruple-bogey 7 on the 17th hole that sent her plummeting from the upper reaches of the leaderboard.
That indeed left nearly everyone with a 7-iron thinking they could leave the premises today with a really big trophy and an even bigger paycheck. The best chance may belong to Se Ri Pak and Suzann Pettersen, who finished the day tied at the top at 4-under-par 212, however there were 11 players within five shots of the lead entering the final 18 holes.
“It’s definitely going to be a shootout,” said Paula Creamer, whose bogey on Saturday’s final hole cost her a share of the lead. Francella, an LPGA rookie who won her first tournament three weeks ago, is also in a tie for third.
Of the first 15 players on the leaderboard, Pak is the only one who has won a major – her fifth such triumph coming in last year’s McDonald’s Championship.
“I don’t really have much pressure because I’ve been here many, many times,” Pak said.
The most recent time Creamer found herself in contention entering the final round of a major was almost two years ago, at the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills Country Club. That day she shot a final-round 79, falling into a tie for 19th.
But two years ago, Creamer was a precocious 18-year-old; now she’s a worldly 20. More to the point, she says in the time since Cherry Hills, she has learned what it takes to win the biggest events.
“I’m 100 percent more patient,” she said. “There’s a moment that you realize you have to be patient and you can say it to yourself over and over again, but until you really believe it, it’s very hard to actually do.”
That has long been Sorenstam’s mantra through her run of 10 major championships, but, with a burgeoning empire away from the course, it appears that her stranglehold on the top of the game is over. Even a 1-under 71 on Saturday – a round that began on the 10th tee, more than an hour before the leaders teed off – could only elevate her into a tie for 33rd place.
“When you’re teeing off the 10th hole, it doesn’t even feel like you’re in a major anymore,” Sorenstam said. “I didn’t have a single butterfly today.”
Ochoa, still looking for her first major, said she learned a great deal from the experience of losing in a playoff to Karrie Webb here a year ago. However, that didn’t seem to be the case when she completely butchered the 173-yard, par-3 17th.
“I don’t even know how to explain it; it was just one bad swing,” she said after falling into a tie for 12th.
Normally in majors it’s impossible for a player to win from that far behind. But apparently these aren’t normal times, which was why Ochoa insisted she was just a couple of good swings from being right back in it.
“Maybe I’ll have something special happen,” she said. “It would be great to have a quadruple bogey one day and then win the tournament the next.”
