A Lot of Players in the Thick of It

On the first day and first round of the first LPGA major of the year, the leader is . . . the rough?

Oh, sure, Juli Inkster, Liselotte Neumann, Pat Hurst, Carin Koch and Penny Hammel tied for the lead Thursday at two-under-par 70, but the real front-runner so far at Mission Hills is the four inches or so of green, spongy grass that runs along the sides of the fairways and is really good at giving players headaches and hiding golf balls.

“You don’t want to be in the rough here,” Koch said.

The point is well taken. Only 11 of the 96 players in the $1.5-million event shot under par on an otherwise near-perfect day for scoring, in bright sunshine and with a slight breeze in the afternoon. It is the highest first-round leading score at the Nabisco since the tournament was designated a major in 1983.

It’s pretty obvious that Mission Hills is no shooting gallery. It’s not quite like Moon Valley in Phoenix, where Annika Sorenstam shot a 59 and so many players fractured par that it went on the disabled list for the weekend. Mission Hills isn’t that long--6,520 yards--but the greens are tricky and the rough is close to U.S. Open caliber.

“The rough is as thick as I remember, but in a major championship, it should be tough,” Inkster said.

As for Sorenstam, her first-day score was 13 strokes over her record-setting 59, but at even par she is only two shots out of the lead.

“I am just going to try and stay calm, not try to win the tournament the first day, which is what I have done in the past,” she said.

“I have been putting too much pressure on myself too early instead of just trying to play steady golf and hopefully I am in contention on Sunday.”

Maybe the best way to make that happen, for Sorenstam or anyone else, is to stay out of the long stuff as often as possible.

Take, for instance, the way Koch played No. 18. She hit driver, 11-wood and nine-iron and still had 150 yards to the green. That’s because she was in the rough with her first two shots.

So how rough is this rough?

“Really, really thick,” said Neumann, who should know, because she won the U.S. Open in 1988. “It’s just really hard to get the ball out of the rough.”

Some had more trouble than others, even Koch. She played 13 holes in a practice round, plus 18 more in the pro-am and was never in the rough. She was in it twice on the 18th Thursday, once on the right side and then on the left side. She had to lay up and still had a six-iron left for her fourth shot to the green.

Koch is now an expert on rough. Afterward, she was asked whether the rough was longer or thicker.

“Both,” she said. “And there’s just a lot of it.”

Hurst couldn’t even get her club on the ball when she drove it into the left rough on No. 1, which she bogeyed.

“There’s no question it’s pretty thick out there, maybe thicker than I remember it,” said Hurst, who won here in 1998.

Dottie Pepper is only one shot off the lead, tied at 71 with Laura Davies, Alison Nicholas, Michele Redman, Tina Barrett and Laura Diaz.

Koch’s husband, Stefan, was once her caddie, but she says that arrangement is over.

“He doesn’t caddie for me because we want to stay married,” she said.

That’s probably a good idea, because Stefan might get a sore back with all the wood that his wife stuffs in her golf bag. This week, Koch has four woods--a three-wood, a five-wood, a nine-wood and an 11-wood--to better negotiate her way out of the gnarly rough that lies in wait for golf balls along the fairways at Mission Hills.

Koch tied for second in the first tournament of the year, but she has been better than 28th in only one tournament since. Last week, she missed the cut at Phoenix while Sorenstam was winning with a score of 27 under.

At Mission Hills, the news for Koch hasn’t been much better. She turned in a 79 on the first day last year, but managed to tie for 17th. It was the first time she had made the cut in four tries.

Koch still loves the place, though.

“Every year I come here and play terrible,” she said. “I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what it is.”

She clearly had an answer on opening day and it came on the sixth hole, a 352-yard par four, which she eagled with an eight-iron from 139 yards. The ball bounced about five feet short of the hole and hopped in, a feat that impressed even Koch.

“It was a really good shot,” she said. “I didn’t skank it in or anything.”

Neither did Pepper, who aced No. 5 from 155 yards with a six-iron.

Extra practice time might have paid off for Neumann, who played Mission Hills over the weekend after she was disqualified at Phoenix. She had signed an incorrect scorecard that didn’t reflect what should have been a two-shot penalty for the infraction of playing off the practice green on a double green shared with another hole.

“So it was something positive, I guess,” she said. “You do something stupid, you got to look at the bright side of it.”

Neumann hasn’t won in three years and she has missed three cuts in six events and been disqualified in another, but she is convinced it’s all right to look at the bright side of it.

“The only good thing is that I’ve started to hit the ball better,” she said.

And just try to steer it away from the rough.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

LEADERBOARD

First Round--Par 72 (36-36):

Carin Koch: 32-38--70 -2

Juli Inkster: 34-36--70 -2

Liselotte Neumann: 35-35--70 -2

Pat Hurst: 35-35--70 -2

Penny Hammel: 33-37--70 -2

6 tied at: -1