Maybe now it’s the lady’s time to get some press as the FedEx Cup and the Pesident’s Cup are over. Paula Creamer and Angela Park shot 5-under 67s Thursday to share the first-round lead in the Samsung World Championship.

The two front-runners have something else in common – the 21-year-old Creamer was the LPGA’s Rookie of the Year in 2005 and the 19-year-old Park already has clinched the honor this year.

Park, who was born in Brazil and moved with her parents to the Los Angeles area when she was 8, said she was nervous but thrilled to be in the tournament.

“I don’t know how to describe the feeling, coming out here,” she said. “Obviously being one of the top 20, elite members of women’s golf, is a very priceless experience. And especially to be the only rookie out here gives me great pride and gives me a lot of confidence.”

Creamer had her irons clicking during her bogey-free round.

She said getting up and down from 115 yards for a par on the second hole seemed to steady her, and she birdied No. 3 to get some momentum.

“I hit the ball really solid, had a lot of good looks at birdie. Made some good ones, missed a couple of very easy putts,” Creamer said. “But overall, it’s the first day and I am very pleased with the way I played.”

Creamer finished second to Annika Sorenstam in the 2005 tournament, and was fifth last year when Lorena Ochoa won.

Ochoa led most of the first round this time, but a late lapse cost her when she made a double bogey on the final hole to drop into a three-way tie with Morgan Pressel and Mi Hyun Kim at 68.

Wie, who turned 18 on Thursday, sprayed some shots and couldn’t get putts to fall Paula Creamer and Angela Park shot 5-under 67s Thursday to share the first-round lead in the Samsung World Championship, while Michelle Wie was last in the 20-player field after a 79. The two front-runners have something else in common – the 21-year-old Creamer was the LPGA’s Rookie of the Year in 2005 and the 19-year-old Park already has clinched the honor this year. Creamer hit the irons great during her bogey-free round. Creamer finished runner up to Annika Sorenstam in the 2005 tournament, and fifth last year when Lorena Ochoa won.

“Should Have Quit for the Year”  Michelle Wie, who turned 18 on Thursday, sprayed shots and couldn’t get putts to fall and shot a 79 for last place in the limited field event . She was three shots behind 19th-place Bettina Hauert. At her news conference she was more worried about getting her homework assignments done for Stanfors than in playing golf. Too bad. Hopefully she can pull her head together before her money from Nike runs out.

 It was great to see Anika in the mix, but what a great story it would have been if Chritina Kim had won sending the Solheim team off to Sweden not knowing if it had the best team going. Lots of fun on a real sun baked nothing looking golf course. I mean, wheat fields in the background? Couldn’t State Farm have ponied up for a better golf course, or at least make it look like it had been watered some time prior to the tournament?

Steinhauer completes State Farm victory

By JAN DENNIS Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Sherri Steinhauer was resigned to a playoff after her bunker shot rolled off the green on the 72nd hole of the LPGA State Farm Classic.

Instead, her 23-foot par putt from the first cut of rough fell into the cup, capping a wild finish that handed the 44-year-old Steinhauer her eighth career title and just the fifth wire-to-wire win on the LPGA Tour this year.

“I was just thinking two-putt and go for a playoff. Give it a chance, but just two-putt and go in the playoff and see what will happen. It went in. It was amazing,” Steinhauer said after her first win since the 2006 Women’s British Open.

The four-time U.S. Solheim Cup player shot a 5-under 67 to finish at 17-under 271, holding off a late charge by Christina Kim at Panther Creek Country Club.

The 23-year-old Kim closed with a 66. She tied for the lead briefly after holing the last of three closing birdies, a 28-foot putt from the fringe on the 18th.

Playing a hole behind Kim, Steinhauer answered, sinking a 25-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th to get to 17 under.

Steinhauer needed just a par on 18 to win the $195,000 top prize, but had to scramble after her second shot found the bunker and her sand shot went long.

For the entire post, click here.

I had a ball watching the WGC, replay of the Women’s British Open, Reno-Tahoe and the Seniors. I think I watched golf for 6-8 hours both Saturday and Sunday. And, this was after playing 18 holes each day. (My wife was away for th weekend… wow, did I have fun.)
I thought Lorena Ochoa’s smile after winning was awesome. She deserved it and I think she is going to win many more.

I was really thinking about entitling this post: “Rory’s Mouth Stuffed Again by Tiger”… or “Things You Shouldn’t Say on Saturday About Tiger Woods When He is in Contention”… or something equally pithy. But boy was that fun seeing those great players getting the stick laid to them by Tiger on Sunday. WOW! He definitely is my hero.

Rory, put a cork in it.

I enjoyed seeing one of the other lefties on the PGA tour win at Reno.

And I thougth D. A. Weibring’s finish at the Seniors was really fun to watch.

All in all a great weekend of professional golf!

Any predictions as to the PGA Championship at Southern Hills?

Ochoa holds a 1 shot lead in the second day of the  Ricoh Women’s British Open. With Annika Sorenstam only 3 back, the weekend promises to be as thrilling as all of the women’s majors have been this year.

I am really pulling for Lorena. While not a fan of her swing, I think she has a wonderful temperment and terrific skills that will mean lots of majors in her future. I hope she gets the major monkey behind her and really snuggles into her number one ranking.

Natalie has always been one of my favorite LPGA golfers. Yes I know many of the reasons are apparent. But I just found myself rooting for her as she got so close to winning over the last few years. The way she handles the losses was really a testament to her as a person. I think this is one of the reasons she is so popular on the LPGA tour.

So good going Natalie, and here’s hoping you win many more!

“Gulbis grabs first LPGA victory

ASSOCIATED PRESS

EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France – Natalie Gulbis broke through at the Evian Masters, winning her first LPGA title with a birdie on the first hole of a playoff with Jang Jeong of South Korea on Sunday.

Jang and the 24-year-old American finished the fourth round tied at 4-under 284. Gulbis had a final round 70, and Jang birdied the last hole to finish with a 72.

“Obviously it was meant to be for me,” said Gulbis, in her sixth season on the LPGA. “Before the playoff, I was very upset at myself because I felt like I had given away this tournament. I thought I needed to get to 7 under to win and I end up at, what, four? Going in today, I never thought that four under would have won this tournament.”

Jang, the 2005 Women’s British Open champion, birdied three of the last four holes to tie Gulbis. At the first extra hole, the 18th, Jang missed the green with her second shot, but Gulbis did not.

“I usually can’t reach that green in two,” Gulbis said. “I hit a really good drive and hit my rescue club in. It was about 25 feet and I thought the eagle putt was in. Fortunately, it ended about a foot away and I tapped it in. I wouldn’t have wanted it to be much farther than that.”

For the entire story, click here.

Great golf, great theater last weekend at the US Women’s Open. Would Ochoa finally breakthrough to win her first major tournament? Could Morgan Pressel summon some last round heroics? Instead it was American Cristie Kerr who provided the final knock out punch to all competitiors with a tremendous birdie on the difficult 14th and 4 straight tough pars to bring it home. Well done Cristie!

“Cristie’s first: Kerr wins U.S. Open

By DOUG FERGUSON
Associated Press

SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. – Even with the silver trophy at her side, Cristie Kerr felt uneasy sharing the premonition she had all year about coming to Pine Needles and winning the U.S. Women’s Open.

She might not have scripted it quite like this.

With a swing she spent the weekend trying to fix, Kerr played the final 45 holes with only two bogeys. She three-putted only once all week on the treacherous Donald Ross greens by using a putter she purchased at a pro shop in South Korea.

And going head-to-head with the No. 1 player in the world Sunday afternoon, Kerr drilled an 18-foot birdie putt on the 14th hole to take the lead and then watched as Lorena Ochoa made another series of mistakes down the stretch in a major.

“When I stepped on the grounds this week, it was just magic,” Kerr said after closing with a 1-under 70 for a two-shot victory over Ochoa and Angela Park to end her 0-for-41 drought in the majors.”

For the entire article, click here.

 I kow this is late, but when Wie was struggling with her game, I didn’t read about how the 88 rule got started. I found this thanks to my new newspaper; The Rocky Mountain News (great paper and almost asgood a comic section as the Dallas Morning news, I still need to know that Prince Valiant can save fair Aletha). This was reprintedthrough the AP, but good read nonetheless:

“The history of the infamous Rule 88

By Associated Press
June 5, 2007

HAVRE DE GRACE, Md. — The LPGA Tour probably didn’t have Michelle Wie in mind when it created a policy that bans for one year any non-tour member who can’t break 88.Barb Trammell, the longtime chief rules official for the LPGA until leaving last year, traced the policy to 1990 when players from the Teaching & Club Pro division competed in tournaments. Some of them struggled, and it became a problem for regular tour members. She recalled two situations that led to what is now known as the “88 Rule.”

“We had a T & CP player in the field who shot 100-plus, and for the players who were paired with her, it was a distraction, as you can imagine,” Trammell said. “The second time, it was a tour player paired with a T & CP player, who made the turn in 52 or 53. The tour player said, ‘Either you’re going to withdraw or I am.’ And the tour player withdrew at the turn.”

That’s when players went to the LPGA board, and the policy was adopted.

Alice Miller, the tournament director of the LPGA Championship and a former player, was involved in the rule. She played with Lori Garbacz and a teaching pro in Minnesota one year. The teaching pro failed to break 100, returned the next day and was on her way to triple digits again when Miller suggested they all withdraw and have lunch.

“She wanted to keep playing,” Miller said. “Lori hit one shot and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ So I kept playing. For a while, they were calling it the ‘Alice Miller Rule.’”

Trammell said the LPGA landscape has changed significantly since then, even when teaching pros play sparingly on the LPGA.

“All their playing abilities are much stronger, much better, than they were 15 or 20 years ago,” Trammell said. “It was never much of an issue. But I don’t think at the time the rule was instituted that anybody contemplated a situation like Michelle Wie.”

Wie flirted with an 88 in her 2007 debut on the LPGA Tour when she abruptly withdrew at the Ginn Tribute with two holes remaining.

The tour waived “Rule 88″ last year for 13-year-old Dakoda Dowd, given an exemption to fulfill a wish for her dying mother. It has been applied twice already this year. Ana Laura Gomez opened with an 88 in the Corona Morelia Championship and did not return, and MacKinzie Kline, the 15-year-old who was allowed to use a cart and oxygen because of a congenital heart defect, had an 89 in the second round of the Ginn Tribute.”

From The Rocky Mountain News

Just 10 weeks ago Pettersen had a semi-monumental breakdown in another LPGA major. She turned it around this time to record a well deserved victory. Michelle Wie finishes dead last, and thankfully it is a non-story.

Read this great article from Ron Sirak about Michelle Wie’s recent on and off course confrontations with LPGA tour officials, pro-am partners, women professional golfers and virtually the entire right side of the planet.

It seems that Wie knows all of the “rules” and sees herself as a non-LPGA member and maybe better able to exploit situations to her benefit. It’s almost like besides her monther, father , her sports psycologist and of course David Leadbetter giving her advice, that she must have a lawyer handy to make sure she can bend but not break the rules other women’s professional golfers live by.

Frankly it is getting so ridiculous that the only way she will ever shut everybody up is to win, and she seems far away from that.

In a dire effort to drum up some website traffic, I along with about every other golf magazine, blog or journal has benn smacking Michelle Wie and her pullout for “health reasons” at the latest LPGA tournament. Golf.com went so far as to say:

“Michelle Wie She’s turned into the Lindsay Lohan of golf: famous for being famous but always making headlines for the wrong reasons. Hopefully the only rehab Wie will have to endure is on her wrist, though I’m not sure what the treatment is for a treatment is for a phantom injury.” (For more click here.)

Ouch!

I do hope Michelle gets her act together. She is awesomely talented and a huge benefit to golf once she gets it all together.