Golf Roundup : U.S. Open Crown Is Fit for a King

Betsy King had birdies on three of the first four holes in the final round of the U.S. Women’s Open championship Sunday and went on to win by four strokes at Lake Orion, Mich.

The victory was the first Open championship and second major title for King, 33, the top player on the LPGA Tour this season with five victories and $503,794 in earnings. She also won the Dinah Shore in 1987.

The $80,000 winner’s share of the $450,000 purse made King the first LPGA player to top $500,000 in official earnings in one season.

King, who blew a three-shot lead on the final two holes Saturday to fall into a tie with Patty Sheehan, rebounded with a three-under-par 68 on the 6,109-yard Old Course at the Indianwood Golf and Country Club and finished at six-under-par 278.

Sheehan, King’s playing partner, fell out of contention with a triple-bogey seven on the eighth hole and ended with a 79 for a 289 total.

King did not win a tournament in her first seven years on the Tour but has won 19 in the last six years--more than any other player on either the men’s or women’s tours.

Nancy Lopez was second, four strokes back. Lopez, who has 40 career victories but has never won the Open, started the day one-over and shot a 68 to finish at two-under 282 for her third second-place showing in the Open.

Lopez broke a three-way tie with Pat Bradley and Penny Hammel with a birdie on the par-three 17th hole.

Ayako Okamoto of Japan, who began the day 12-over, tied the U.S. Women’s Open single-round record with a six-under 65 in the final round. Sally Little set the mark in the final round in 1978 and Judy Dickinson tied it in 1985.

Mike Donald and Tim Simpson survived but Hal Sutton was eliminated in a darkness-suspended playoff at the Anheuser-Busch tournament in Williamsburg, Va.

After Sutton dropped out with a double bogey on the third extra hole, PGA Tour officials decided at 8:25 p.m. (EDT) that it was too dark to continue play. The tournament had been twice delayed by rain.

The playoff between Donald and Simpson was to resume this morning on the 16th hole at Kingsmill Golf Club.

Donald, Simpson and Sutton finished four tours of Kingsmill’s 6,776-yard, par-71 layout in 268, 16 shots under par. Donald closed with a six-under 65, Simpson a 67 and Sutton a 68.

Mike Hulbert, who led after the second and third rounds, bogeyed the 72nd hole and lost a chance to join the playoff. He finished at 15-under 269 after a one-under 70.

John Paul Cain, who never played on the PGA Tour and turned pro when he joined the Senior Tour last fall, shot a five-under-par 66 for a one-shot victory in the Greater Grand Rapids Open at Grand Rapids, Mich.

Cain, a 53-year-old stockbroker from Houston, became the first Monday qualifier to win a Senior Tour event since Larry Mowry in 1987. Cain finished with a 10-under 203.

Cain earned $45,000 and a one-year exemption from qualifying.

Four days before the British Open, Nick Faldo and Sandy Lyle boosted Britain hopes of victory by beating Americans Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus by four shots in a Trans-Atlantic challenge at St. Mellion, England. Lyle and Faldo shot a four-under-par 68.