No icing on cake for Ochoa
She has won 19 times, including a major, and she’s the two-time player of the year, but Lorena Ochoa says it’s vitally important to have a handle on quality of life. It’s not all about golf, she said Friday after her one-under-par 71 put her in a tie for the lead at the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
There are other things, important things, Ochoa said.
“Chocolate cake.”
That’s for dessert, maybe Sunday night, as long as Ochoa can close the deal at suddenly oven-like Mission Hills, where Ochoa and Heather Young share the 36-hole lead at five-under 139.
If she hadn’t lipped out what looked like a sure birdie putt at the 18th, Ochoa would have the lead all to herself, but that ball just wasn’t going to fall. Ochoa watched it with a blank stare.
“I didn’t have any more emotion to show,” she said. “I was done and ready to go home.”
Young might have felt the same way after her wobbly start -- a bogey on her second hole and a double bogey on her third. But she had a philosophy to deal with it, and it worked, even though it had nothing to do with chocolate cake.
“Golf in general is just a work in progress,” she said, “got to keep going. It’s not one hole, it’s not one shot, it’s not one round.”
And so with three birdies in a six-hole stretch on her back nine, Young pulled herself together to finish a two-under 70 and get even with Ochoa as the first major of the season made a full left turn into the weekend.
Young said she has been struggling with her game for about a year and didn’t have any expectations at all, so she didn’t get down on herself after her double bogey at the 12th, her third hole.
She had no trouble explaining the problem she had playing that hole.
“Just a lot of shots.”
That was true for most of the field. There were only four rounds in the 60s Friday as the greens grew firmer as they baked under the sun in Rancho Mirage.
Maria Hjorth, who shot a 70 in the morning, moved into a tie for third at 140 with Mi Hyun Kim (70).
Annika Sorenstam doubled over from the effects of the heat after her 70 and she’s tied for fifth with Hee-Won Han (69), only two shots off the lead.
On an afternoon that grew increasingly warmer, Ochoa seemed to have it made in the shade, but then she hit a tree at the 384-yard par four 12th hole and made bogey, then found a greenside bunker at the 15th and missed a 15-foot, left-to-right breaking par putt and wound up with another bogey.
Just like that, her two-shot lead was gone and Kim had caught her.
Sorenstam was heading in the right direction with three consecutive birdies and reached four under, but then she dropped a shot with a bogey at the 12th when she three-putted from 25 feet.
Sorenstam finished with six straight pars and a stomachache.
“The course is tough enough,” she said. “I don’t need a stomachache on top of it. One thing at a time.”
Hjorth, who was ninth here last year, said the conservative approach pays off on a layout as difficult as Mission Hills.
“Don’t make too many mistakes,” she said. “And that’s where you kind of need to try to stay away from on this course and try to stay with your pars, that’s pretty important.”
Ochoa said she couldn’t really complain about her day, or about any putts that didn’t drop, even the one at the 18th.
“That’s the way it is. It’s a major championship,” she said. “I keep repeating to myself, just be patient and you’re in position and you have a couple more [good] rounds together.”
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