Monster Two-Putt Wins It for Sheehan

What can you do in 120 feet? Run three plays, then punt? Race stock cars? Move into a new area code?

Patty Sheehan’s task Sunday was to putt a golf ball twice from that distance and have it drop into the hole on the 18th green on the 72nd hole on the last day of a major championship and win the Nabisco Dinah Shore.

Now, as far as putting distances go, 120 feet is a little on the long side. Imagine Barstow to Indio. And getting a ball to roll that far and stay on line, there has to be either a magnet in the cup or magic in the putter.

Sheehan sized up her task: “It was a monster.”

Let the record show that Sheehan worked wonders. She knocked her first putt over the hump in the middle of the green, down the other side and 10 feet from the hole.

From there, Sheehan rolled the ball straight into the hole for the biggest, longest, two-putt par of her 17-year career.

Sheehan, 39, won her sixth major title Sunday at Mission Hills, where she closed with a final-round 71 and held off a trio of challengers to win the tournament just as she had dreamed since she was a youngster.

“This was the tournament that introduced me to women’s golf,” Sheehan said. “This one more than any other was more visible and glamorous. I remember one day when I was a kid, saying, ‘Gosh, I hope one day to play there.’ ”

Now Sheehan also can say she has won it. Her 35th tournament victory goes along with her other major titles--the 1983, 1984 and 1993 LPGA Championships and the 1991 and 1994 U.S. Opens.

Sheehan’s seven-under-par score of 281 meant a one-shot victory worth $135,000. Her margin of victory was small, even if the manner in which she achieved it was great.

Kelly Robbins, Annika Sorenstam and Meg Mallon finished tied for second at 282, although each one had a chance.

Robbins double-bogeyed No. 15 with a one-shot lead, birdied No. 17 to tie Sorenstam, then bogeyed the 18th when she drove into a bunker and missed a 12-footer for par.

Mallon missed three consecutive birdie putts on her last three holes, including an eight-footer on No. 18 that slid past the hole by inches.

Sorenstam was tied with Sheehan until the 18th hole, where she three-putted for bogey, the last time from three feet.

It was only Sorenstam’s second bogey in two days. The other was on No. 18 Saturday when she doubled it, distracted by an ABC-TV cameraman who got too close to her and she wound up hitting her third shot into the lake in front of the green.

Sorenstam said she should have stepped away from that shot and said it still affected her. “It crossed my mind all day,” she said. “But I’m the one swinging the clubs. Those two shots were big today.”

Maybe, but the two biggest shots were the ones Sheehan made on the 18th green. Just getting there was an adventure.

With Mallon, Sorenstam and Robbins already through and watching, Sheehan stood on the 18th tee. She had not looked at the scoreboard, she did not know she led and thought she needed to finish with a birdie.

Sheehan’s three-wood off the tee nearly went into the lake. Her three-iron second shot found the fairway bunker on the right.

Aiming at the television tower behind the green, Sheehan swung a nine-iron, but the ball went far to the left. The ball stopped on the green, but a very long way from the hole.

“To look at that thing and say I’ve got to two-putt this to win the Dinah Shore . . . well, I never dreamed I’d have to do that,” Sheehan said.

All that was left after that was for her to do a cartwheel, then wade carefully into the water that surrounds the island green. “I was very dignified, was I not?” Sheehan said.