Ochoa's million-dollar shot same as her year: spectacular
Nobody ever expected that she'd need it. The offbeat, freaky format was designed to produce tension down the stretch, by virtue of some white-knuckle closing holes down the stretch and continual cuts over the first three days to pare the field of 32 to eight.
Yet Ochoa, who turned 26 on Thursday, had a whopping five-shot lead over the not-so-magnificent seven after she birdied the ninth hole. With birdies on four of her first six holes, the only tension was which player would emerge to win the B Flight.
If area fans had wanted to watch a Sunday massacre, they could have traveled to Philadelphia for the Dolphins game. Before she burped on the 17th, she hadn't made a bogey or worse since the fourth hole of the second round, a span 48 holes. Ochoa was asked whether the en-masse stumble left her surprised.
"Surprised," she said, "but happy."
The first twosome off the tee, Kim and Cristie Kerr, had hoped to set the tone for others to follow. Sadly, they did. Both bogeyed the sixth and double-bogeyed the seventh.
Then it was like watching lemmings going off a cliff.
"It's amazing what a million dollars can do to someone's golf game," said Kim, who shot 81 and finished seventh.
Like Paula Creamer's neon-pink golf ball, it was hard on the eyes. Former ADT winner Karrie Webb, who lives in the area and frequently practices at the Trump track, dumped two balls in the water on the seventh hole and made a quadruple bogey, falling 10 shots off the pace roughly 100 minutes after teeing off. Playing partner Sarah Lee made a triple-bogey on the same hole.
By the time Ochoa finished the sixth hole and amassed four birdies, the seven other players had combined for five. Mind you, Ochoa, playing in the last group, had toured the fewest holes.
If there was any residual question about whether Ochoa had supplanted Sorenstam as the primary fixture atop the LPGA totem pole, it was answered this year. She won her first major, led the tour in scoring average, birdies and greens in regulation. She's the third-longest player off the tee. It's not fair, really.
Most impressively, she finished in the top 10 in 21 of 25 starts and won five of her past nine starts. It was her eighth victory of the year, or for those who like their news with a lyrical bent, ocho for Ochoa. It has been a long, productive year.
"It's time to go home," Ochoa said.
As further testament to her emergence, the tour is doing likewise with its events. Next year, Ochoa will become the second active player to host her own tournament, one of a trio of events scheduled in Mexico in 2008. In 2004, there were nada.
Not that pesos are the best yardstick of success, since the purses only continue to head north, but Ochoa obliterated the old earnings mark, set by Annika Sorenstam during her 11-win season in 2002, by $1.5 million. She finished the season with $4,364,994, roughly 2½ times what runner-up Suzann Pettersen took home.
"It's been amazing from the start to the end," Ochoa said.
To put it in better perspective, she would have finished seventh on the PGA Tour in earnings -- and the boys play for, oh, about five times the money. Ochoa took home more cash than Jim Furyk, the No. 3 player in the world, and Zach Johnson, who included the Masters among his two wins.
"Then to come in here this week and put another million up there, I think that record will stand for quite a long time," Gulbis said. "She had an absolutely phenomenal year."
