St. Andrews, Scotland - This time there would be no meltdown, no miraculous shot from another player, no doubt about it.
Lorena Ochoa has her first major championship.
The Mexican star closed with a one-over 74 in the final round Sunday to win the Women’s British Open by four shots, ending her 0-fer in major championships with a weekend of steady golf on the Scottish coast while all the pressure of dubious past performances in the majors rested on her slight frame.
She seemed to handle it with ease, protecting her first-round 67 with three scores of 74 or better to finally gain that last bit of validation for her now-unassailable No. 1 ranking.
No one — not Annika Sorenstam, not previous foil Karrie Webb — could stop Ochoa this time. Her stunning 16-month run to the top of the women’s game has its climax.
“It was a great day,” she said.
Ochoa finished at five-under 287. She led after each of the four rounds, a fine achievement in the first professional women’s tournament ever hosted by storied St. Andrews.
Tiger Woods also went wire-to-wire for his second win at St. Andrews in 2005.
“It’s really hard to describe and I think it’s not going to be easy to realize what just happened,” Ochoa said, responding to her status as the first woman to win on the course.
Several players took stabs at Ochoa’s lead early on, but there were only three other survivors to par when all was said and done. Jee Young Lee and Maria Hjorth had matching 71s in the final round to finish at one-under 291.
Reilley Rankin also shot a 71 and was alone in fourth place at even-par.
Sorenstam, who was within five shots of Ochoa after six holes, went five-over par on her last 12 holes and tumbled all the way into a tie for 16th place at four-over 296.
Looking for a jolt to her middling play, Sorenstam didn’t come close to getting it. She closed with rounds of 77 and 76 on the weekend.
“I’m swinging as good as I can. I’m putting as well as I can, but it is just not coming together,” Sorenstam said. “It was just one of those weeks.”
The 25-year-old Ochoa had never won a major before Sunday, but she didn’t lack opportunities.
She squandered a seven-shot lead in the final round of last year’s Kraft Nabisco Championship and was beaten in a playoff by Webb. It was a record- tying meltdown at the modern women’s majors, one that almost felled her in regulation.
Many remember Webb’s miraculous hole-out eagle from the fairway at the 18th hole that Sunday, and for good reason. But lost in the mix was Ochoa’s own eagle moments later, set up by a gutsy five-wood into the 18th green at Mission Hills.
Ochoa was in the mix until the last hole of the 2005 U.S. Women’s Open, then suffered a case of the shanks. She closed with a quadruple-bogey when a par could have gotten her into a playoff with Birdie Kim.
The ‘06 Kraft Nabisco was the only other time Ochoa held the 54-hole lead at a major. Sunday, she improved to 7-6 all-time with the third-round lead, and 3-3 this season.
It was her 13th career win, her 10th in the last 16 months, her fourth this season.
And it was never in doubt.
The high winds that hounded players and sent scores soaring on Saturday had died down by Sunday morning — it did rain, however — and Mhairi McKay and Miki Saiki posted early 67s to prove there were good numbers to be had on the Old Course.
As it turned out, Ochoa didn’t need one of them.
Several players made early runs at her lead while Ochoa opened with four consecutive pars, including Sorenstam, who made birdies at the third and sixth holes to pull within five shots.
Ochoa responded with back-to-back birdies from the fifth, shaking off any early jitters she may have had. The birdies put Ochoa at eight-under, giving her a seven-shot lead.
She gave a stroke back with a bogey at the eighth, and her lead was trimmed to five shots after Lee made a birdie ahead at the ninth.
But Ochoa made the turn with the same six-shot lead she held overnight after rolling in an 18-foot birdie putt at the ninth. When she lipped out a 10-foot par putt at the 11th, her advantage was five again.
Further bogeys at the 15th and 17th only served to trim her final margin of victory.
“I believed that I would win the tournament Monday when I first started practicing,” Ochoa said, laughing. “But the 18th tee shot (Sunday) is when we did it.
“After we hit that tee shot and put it in the middle of the fairway … I was walking with my caddie just saying that, you know, we did it and it was a great feeling.”
And a long time coming.
