Even while suffering her first bogey of the tournament (an 18-footer on the par-5 13th that saved her from an even worse fate), Lorena Ochoa is the proud owner of the two lowest rounds in the field at the HSBC Women's Champions event in Singapore. The 3 other players who have come within 1 stroke of her highest round, Thursday's 66, once--Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer, and Ai Miyazato--trail her by 7, 7, and 10 shots, respectively. The 6 other players who have once come within 2 strokes of it--In-Kyung Kim, Linda Wessberg, Natalie Gulbis, Jee Young Lee, Rachel Hetherington, and Amy Hung--are 7, 8, 9, 9, 14, and 17 shots behind her, respectively. I could go on with the 5 other people who have broken 70 once--nobody except Ochoa has done it twice thus far--but I think you get my point.
Perhaps focusing on a handful of today's best rounds will make it a tiny bit clearer just how superlatively Ochoa is playing the Tanah Merah course. The first is, of course, Ochoa's itself. She found a way today to top yesterday's front-side 32 by 1 shot, which put her at -11 through 27 holes. In the meantime, nobody within shouting distance of her was making a charge. After the first three holes, to be sure, there were 10 golfers in the lead group within two shots of co-leaders Ochoa, Creamer, and Miyazato. But after Ochoa rattled off 5 birdies in her next 6 holes, Ai-chan was the closest one behind her, and she was 4 shots back after a fine 34. Creamer wouldn't even match Ai-chan's high-water mark of -7 through 29 holes (by which point she was 5 shots behind Ochoa) until her 33rd hole, but she promptly gave it back with a bogey on the short 16th. Ai-chan, meanwhile, was nose-diving, twice making consecutive bogeys as she closed out her round. In-Kyung Kim, thanks to an eagle-birdie run on the 9th and 10th, battled her way to -6 through her first 30 holes, but a triple-bogey 8 on the 13th--a hole she had birdied the day before--forced her into salvage mode, which, to her credit, she performed well, erasing the disaster with 3 birdies in her final 4 holes. And Annika closed out her round with 4 straight birdies to join Creamer and Kim at -6, passing Wessberg, Stacy Prammanasudh, Karrie Webb, and Gulbis, all of whom had spent the day dreaming of breaking the -5 barrier--not to mention a host of players who had dreamed of approaching it. By comparison, Ochoa broke the -5 barrier in 16 holes, the -6 barrier in 22 holes, and the -7 barrier in 23 holes, never to look back.
Is the tournament over? No. Golf being what it is, and the course being what it is, there's no guarantee Ochoa will stay in the zone over the next 36 holes. And she is being chased by a set of seasoned veterans (Sorenstam, Webb, Pat Hurst, Laura Diaz, and Maria Hjorth), rising mid-career stars (Creamer, Prammanasudh, Gulbis, Sarah Lee, Angela Stanford, Jimin Kang, Suzann Pettersen, Christina Kim, and Shi Hyun Ahn), and talented young guns (IK Kim, Wessberg, Jee Young Lee, Morgan Pressel, Ai-chan, Ji-Yai Shin, and Angela Park) who know how to be patient, take advantage of their own opportunities, and go on runs of their own. But as the stumbles of Kim, Creamer, and Miyazato today--not to mention others who flirted with going low early, like Wessberg and Prammanasudh, or who scored well but could have done better, like Gulbis, Stanford, Shin, and Hjorth--show, Ochoa's consistent excellence puts a pressure of its own on the players with the best chance of keeping pace with her.
Nobody needs that kind of extra pressure when the course itself is capable of beating up the best golfers in the world. Se Ri Pak bounced back from her opening 79 with a solid 71 today, pulling her 1 shot ahead of Cristie Kerr and 6 of Mi Hyun Kim. Pak now trails Juli Inkster, Seon Hwa Lee, Brittany Lincicome, Sherri Steinhauer, Momoko Ueda, and Jeong Jang by 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, and 5 shots, respectively, in the race to make the most out of a deeply disappointing tournament. For reference, Jang, the leader of this pack, is 14 shots behind Ochoa.
My sense is that the front 9 tomorrow will tell if the final 27 holes will be a competition or a victory lap. If Ochoa breaks 33 for the third consecutive time, forget it. But if she doesn't--and if a few people can go out in the low 30s--we might see a chase pack emerge from the field on moving day.
[Update: Nothing against Gillian Wong, but the AP story out of Singapore was just as boring today as it was yesterday. You're better off going to the HSBC site itself. The only interesting thing I found out from Wong was that Creamer's bogey on 16 involved a missed tap-in. As usual, the post-round wrap-up to read is from Hound Dog.]
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