LPGA Championship 2003: Heartbreaker

Grace Park has for the last year and a half been living up to all the hype she engendered when she was one of the most dominant amateurs in the women's game. In 2002, she managed a gaggle of top tens and a win, and with perhaps a little more luck, she might have had three trophies instead of just one. This year it's been more of the same. A fantastic performance at the Ping, where she fell just one shot short of Se Ri Pak thanks to Se Ri's 45 foot par save; then a glorious win at Kingsmill following a disastrous start to her final round. We've seen a little of everything from Grace this year: great putting, booming drives, long irons that land softly and perfectly, and clutch shots when she needed them most.

But one thing we have not seen much of during this run is success at the Majors. Before this week's McDonald's LPGA Championship, Grace's best finish in a Major was a tie for 6th place at the 2000 US Women's Open. In all her attempts since turning pro, she has never really been in contention at a Major. For a player with her skill and record in ordinary events, this was a glaring weakness in her otherwise startling resume.

Grace used her sheer willpower to get the ball to do her
bidding at the LPGA Championship
Reuters/Tim Shaffer

Grace plays peekaboo in round 1
Reuters/Tim Shaffer

And despite sitting third on the money list with a win in 2003, there was reason to believe that this week would not improve that record. Grace missed the cut at the season's first Major, the Nabisco. She also missed the cut at the Kellogg-Keebler, the event previous to the LPGA Championship. And her previous best in this event was a tie for 15th at last year's edition.

Grace started on the tenth hole on Thursday, in the morning. The weather at the venue had been, to put it charitably, horrible, and her round started more than an hour late, as the grounds crew frantically tried to make the course playable. But they were not quite able to succeed, so a special 'lift-clean-replace' rule was put into effect. This rule meant that, if your ball landed in the fairway (the key), you could lift it and clean off the mud, but then had to replace it in the exact spot you lifted it from. Somewhat less of an advantage than 'lift clean and place', which lets you drop the ball within a club length of the original spot.

When she finally got going, she got off to a great start. She birdied the par 5 11th to go one under. Then on 14, she flied her second shot into the hole from the fairway for an eagle 2. And suddenly Grace was near the top of the leaderboard. She bogeyed 15, but snapped back with birdies on 16 and 17 to take the lead at 4 under for her first nine holes.

But how quickly things can change! On the front nine, Grace began to struggle, notching bogeys on 3, 6 and 8 to drop back down to 1 under. Fortunately, she was able to birdie the last hole, the par 5 ninth, to finish at 2 under. In a Major, anything near par is pretty good, and a 2 under 69 (this is a par 71 course) is downright fabulous. This left her in a tie for fourth on a leaderboard studded with top Korean players: Hee-Won Han had the lead at 4 under, and Young Kim was 1 shot behind Grace at 1 under. Jeong Jang, Mi Hyun Kim and Se Ri all lurked at one over.

Grace waves after dunking an eagle on hole 14
Reuters/Tim Shaffer