Lpga Championship

Good morning--Annika Sorenstam--Hope you are back swinging in time for the LPGA Championship at Bulle Rock.

Scanning the leader board at the LPGA Championship, you notice a couple of Chos, two Davies, four Lees, five Parks and nine Kims. Out of 149 names in yesterday's opening-round field, though, there are really only two that draw the attention of the casual sports fan, and both have done their part this week to illustrate what it means to be a professional golfer. Annika Sorenstam told us what to do; Michelle Wie showed us what not to do. The past several days - which began with Wie's curious withdrawal at the Ginn Tribute Hosted By Annika and continued with a public reprimand from Sorenstam and a Team Wie meeting with the LPGA's top boss - might ultimately push forward an important and inevitable realization: For the first time since Wie began making waves four years ago, the young golfer finds herself needing the LPGA just as much as the tour needs her. And if both are going to move forward and feed off each other profitably, they'd better come to a quick understanding that what's best for Wie is best for the tour and vice versa.

The migration, a trickle at first, became a steady flow that eventually transformed the LPGA Tour. Nearly a decade after South Korea's Se Ri Pak won the 1998 McDonald's LPGA Championship, the country that spawned this soon-to-be Hall of Famer has become the single biggest force in women's golf. When the 53rd LPGA Championship begins today at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace, Pak will tee off as its defending champion, and 37 others of Korean descent, including Michelle Wie, will be among the 150 players in the field.

WEST POINT, Miss. -- Considering everything she accomplished as a rookie last season, maybe anything Se Ri Pak did this year would have constituted a sophomore jinx.Yet the signs were there even last summer and fall that Pak was heading for problems.After the last of her four victories that included both the U.S. Women's Open and LPGA Championship -- starting with the Open, three came in a stretch of four weeks -- there were rumors and indications of burnout.Going into the 54th Women's Open, which begins here tomorrow at the Old Waverly Golf Club, Pak is not yet back.

The news was more traumatic to Tina Barrett than anything she had faced in her 10 years on the LPGA Tour. The only thing worse would have been something bad happening to her husband or a member of her family back in Baltimore.Then again, DeDe Owens was like family to Barrett.It was during a rain delay at last month's Titleholders Championship that Barrett learned of Owens' heart attack and that the 53-year-old golf teacher had lapsed into a coma. Owens would die a week later."It's been tough," Barrett said yesterday from Wilmington, Del., where she is preparing for this week's LPGA Championship.

KUTZTOWN, Pa. -- The conversation took place two weeks ago, during the third round of the LPGA's Safeco Classic near Seattle. Hall of Famer Patty Sheehan was trying to get Se Ri Pak's mind off the misery of having made three straight double bogeys on the front nine."

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Going into the final round of the LPGA Championship, there was a question of whether co-leader Se Ri Pak, a 20-year-old rookie from South Korea, could stand up to the pressure.Some three hours later, after a succession of pars, she knocked in successive birdie putts at the 15th and 16th holes to put an exclamation point on her first tour victory.She closed with a 68 for a total of 273, 11-under-par for four rounds over the 6,386-yard DuPont Country Club course.That was good for a three-stroke margin on playing partner Lisa Hackney (71)

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Se Ri Pak, who has been steady although not spectacular in her first year on the LPGA Tour, may be about to change that.A star in her native Korea, and a co-medalist at last fall's qualifying school, Pak continued her assault on the DuPont Country Club course yesterday, opening a two-stroke lead halfway through the LPGA Championship.Pak, 20, shot 3-under-par 68 yesterday, and her two-round total of 133 is the lowest 36-hole score in tournament history. She is two strokes in front of Lisa Walters, 66-69135.

One of the most heated subjects for debate in recent years has been the criteria for making the LPGA's Hall of Fame. Only eight players have qualified since the current standards were established in 1967, bringing the membership to a total of 14 players and one contributor (the late Dinah Shore). Critics say it's too exclusive.Now, with the World Golf Hall of Fame opening next month in St. Augustine, Fla., there is a movement to ease the requirement that candidates win at least 30 official events, including two major championships, or 35 events with one major or 40 events without winning any majors.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- The rains finally ended yesterday, so the first round of the LPGA Championship is expected to go off on schedule at DuPont Country Club.An LPGA tournament, rain and DuPont course superintendent Earl Shafer have had a love/hate relationship in the '90s.Rain has been a problem every year since 1991, first for the McDonald's event, and, since 1994, for the LPGA Championship.Things were so bad two years ago, one round was canceled, and it was played as a 54-hole tournament.

The McDonald's LPGA Championship said goodbye to Bulle Rock in improbable fashion Sunday, with a Swedish rookie named Anna Nordqvist earning her first tour victory on a sun-splashed afternoon in Harford County. But don't let all the hugs and champagne-popping scene on the 18th hole fool you. Women's golf is struggling. Forget the fact that the LPGA Championship still doesn't have a home for 2010. Forget that there are open dates on this year's schedule. Forget that major sponsors, whacked by the recession, are pulling out in droves.

In general, it's pretty hard to figure out what's going on inside Anna Nordqvist's head. The 6-foot-tall, 22-year-old from Eskilstuna, Sweden, has what can fairly be called a stoic, Nordic personality. It's rare to see outward displays of emotion from her on the golf course, whether it's joy or frustration. Like a mannequin's in a department store window, her expression often seems frozen in thought, or fixed on the horizon. But in the closing holes of the McDonald's LPGA Championship on Sunday at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace, little bits of life began to bubble to the surface.

The McDonald's LPGA Championship said goodbye to Bulle Rock in improbable fashion Sunday, with a Swedish rookie named Anna Nordqvist earning her first tour victory on a sun-splashed afternoon in Harford County. But don't let all the hugs and champagne-popping scene on the 18th hole fool you. Women's golf is struggling. Forget the fact that the LPGA Championship still doesn't have a home for 2010. Forget that there are open dates on this year's schedule. Forget that major sponsors, whacked by the recession, are pulling out in droves.

Less than 24 hours after she struggled to avoid the cut, Irene Cho blistered Bulle Rock for a 7-under-par 65 on Saturday and climbed into contention for the McDonald's LPGA Championship in Havre de Grace. The fine line between failure and success, not surprisingly, was in her head. "I think I just tried to hit every shot the best I could, and if I did hit a bad shot, you've got to let it go," Cho, from La Habra, Calif., said of the difference in her play. Except for a bogey on the 18th on Saturday, Cho would have tied the course record of 64 set in 2006 by Nicole Castrale.

Katherine Hull gets it. She understands the layman's perspective. She knows there are people watching the LPGA Championship who aren't rooting for players like her to win her first major. They want to see Michelle Wie or Natalie Gulbis or Paula Creamer in the mix, the tour's young and marketable stars who are expected to carry golf into the post-Annika Sorenstam era. But sports don't work that way. Endorsement contracts, swimsuit calendars and expectations don't hit the golf ball. That will forever remain up to the players.

Golfer Paige MacKenzie was killing time on her Twitter page recently, taking a break from getting ready for this week's McDonald's LPGA Championship in Havre de Grace, when she noticed something fellow LPGA Tour member Jeehae Lee had written from the airport. Lee was hoping to fly to Baltimore, and was now hopelessly confused and seemed a little panicked. Is there a good reason why these people at the gate are saying baltimore, washington? Lee wrote. Am I missing something? Oh rookie, MacKenzie quickly Tweeted back, you're going to BWI-Baltimore/Washington.

Here's what you have to love about the LPGA: a player who stands 5 feet 2 and weighs as much as a Keebler elf is the talk of the tour this morning. This would be South Korean In-Kyung Kim, who is all of 20 and who won the State Farm Classic by a stroke over Se Ri Pak on Sunday, creating all sorts of buzz for this week's McDonald's LPGA Championship at Bulle Rock in Harford County. Did you see Kim's spunky performance? In only her second tour victory, she managed four birdies on the front nine and then birdied 11, 13, 17 and 18 to shoot a 7-under-par 65, no small feat given the gusty conditions and tricky greens at Panther Creek Country Club in Springfield, Ill. And wonder of wonders, she actually seemed to be having a good time closing out the win, something we haven't seen since Rocco Mediate smiled and yukked it up at last year's men's U.S. Open, when he went head-to-head - and lost - against Tiger Woods.

As a relatively unknown teenager from Taiwan, Yani Tseng beat Michelle Wie and Morgan Pressel to win prestigious amateur tournaments in successive years. It was merely a prelude to what happened yesterday at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace. Tseng, who joined the LPGA Tour earlier this year at age 19, won the McDonald's LPGA Championship, watching as Lorena Ochoa and Annika Sorenstam faltered down the stretch and then celebrating after Tseng beat Swedish veteran Maria Hjorth on the fourth hole of sudden death.

So much for the orderly transfer of power. Late yesterday afternoon, Lorena Ochoa worked her way through the crowd that was cheering her and chanting her name as she headed off Bulle Rock's 18th green and to the scorer's trailer. About 15 minutes later, Annika Sorenstam made the same trek, except the crowds were cheering even louder. The cheers were not for the victor. The victor was still playing, heading back to the 18th tee for the playoff to decide the McDonald's LPGA Championship.

With two of the sport's biggest names in contention going into yesterday's third round of the McDonald's LPGA Championship, you would figure that either Lorena Ochoa or Annika Sorenstam would somehow find her way to the top of the leader board at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace. Ochoa and Sorenstam remain in contention, but they have some catching up to do. Jee Young Lee, 22, a South Korean with a string of top-10 finishes in major championships, followed a 7-under-par 65 by Maria Hjorth of Sweden with one of her own to reach 12-under 204 and take a one-stroke lead over Hjorth going into today's final round.