With her bogey-free 63, Mhairi McKay has made an emphatic statement to kick off the Michelob Ultra Open. Although she showed signs last summer of regaining her 2001-2002 top 25 form, she's had a rocky start to the 2008 season, missing almost half her cuts and only breaking 70 once before this morning's round. Even so, there's no reason she couldn't get her first LPGA victory this week at what some players are calling the tour's 5th major (ring a bell, PGA fans?). At the very least, it looks she's going to force the rest of field to take this tournament away from her.
Almost as big a surprise at the top of the leaderboard as the morning groups are finishing their rounds is Diana D'Alessio's 65--her best round of the season, as well. Although she's been steadily improving over the past few years and has shown herself to be capable of stringing together sub-70 rounds, I'd be much more surprised if she stayed in contention over the next 3 days.
I wouldn't be at all surprised, however, if Annika Sorenstam and
Lorena Ochoa were in the mix on the back 9 Sunday. Sorenstam's season-low and bogey-free 64 serves notice that she's added going low to her already-formidable repertoire, while Ochoa's 3 consecutive birdies on the back to secure her 65 show that she's put last week's wind-borne struggles behind her. Two other players I've been looking all season to break through and start playing well again--Stacy Prammanasudh and Eun-Hee Ji--shot matching 66s to stay in the lead pack.
The best of the rest in the morning groups are by no means out of it. Meena Lee's 67 puts her at the head of this class, closely followed at 68 by Cristie Kerr, Jee Young Lee, and Maria Hjorth, and at 69 by Pat Hurst and Na Yeon Choi. But big names like Karrie Webb (70), Paula Creamer (71), and Suzann Pettersen (71) will have to work a bit harder to catch the lead pack.
So far nobody's got off to a blazing-hot start among those in the afternoon groups, and I don't want to jinx anyone at -3 or -2 so far in their rounds. More later, then!
[Update 1 (5:15 pm): Song-Hee Kim and Candie Kung joined the back of the lead pack with 66s--we'll see if anyone else still on the course can match or improve on their finishes!]
[Update 2 (6:52 pm): How about that Sun Young Yoo snagging birdies on her last 4 holes for a 31 on the front after a fine 33 on the back? She was definitely on my watch list for the Pakpicker this week, but I couldn't pull the trigger on her. And rookie Hee Young Park put herself in the lead pack in yet another tournament after firing a 66--if she can avoid a disastrous 18 this week, she can get herself back in the ROY race in a serious way. More after dinner!]
[Update 3 (7:41 pm): Congrats to Janice Moodie for joining the lead pack with a 66 and to Jeong Jang, Inbee Park, Jimin Kang, Karen Stupples, Becky Morgan, Mikaela Parmlid, and Helen Alfredsson for joining Meena Lee at the head of the best of the rest pack at 67. With 90 people at par or better, 73 under par, and 58 breaking 70, some very big names are going to have to make a lot of birdies to make sure they make the cut tomorrow, among them Webb, Ya Ni Tseng, Christina Kim, Laura Diaz, Momoko Ueda, and Teresa Lu at 70 and Creamer, Pettersen, Lindsey Wright, Carin Koch, Brittany Lang, Ai Miyazato, Sophie Gustafson, and Laura Davies at 71.]
[Update 4 (8:58 pm): Hound Dog is ready already with his first-round recap and LPGA.com already has its notes and interviews page up. More coming after the girls fall asleep!]
[Update 5 (5/9/08, 2:00 am): Two big details came out of LPGA.com as to why scores were so low Thursday--both having to do with the weather. First, the intermittent light rains kept the wind down for the morning, which made it easier to hit fairways and greens. One of the players mentioned you were only getting 3-4 yards of roll on the fairways, so it wasn't wet enough for balls to plug, just wet enough to make it harder for them to bounce or roll off the fairway on your tee shots. Second, the greens were very receptive, which allowed players to gun for pins all day. So if you were hitting a lot of fairways, you probably were going to give yourself more birdie chances than usual. The stats bear this out--of the 11 players in the lead pack, only D'Alessio (29 putts) and Kim (30) had more than 27 putts in their round, and only Park (12 greens) and Yoo, Prammanasudh, Ji, and Kung (13) hit fewer than 14 greens in regulation. Of course, if your putter was cold, all the ballstriking in the world didn't matter: consider Creamer's 18 greens and 36 putts to see why she'll be fighting to make the cut tomorrow. It looks like Angela Park (76) had it even worse with the short game--14 greens and 36 putts, with 1 birdie and 1 double. Michelle Wie (75), by contrast, only hit 8 fairways and 10 greens, so her putting (29) saved her from doing even worse--by my calculations, she must have had something like 3 1-putt pars and 3 1-putt bogeys to go with her 1 birdie (assuming she didn't 3-putt or chip in anywhere). And Hee-Won Han (74), if anything, hit the ball even worse than Wie: 10 fairways, 9 greens, +5 over her final 13 holes after a -2 start (bogey-par-eagle-par-birdie), but still had only 30 putts.]
[Update 6 (2:25 am): Golfweek gives us a chance to compare Beth Ann Baldry (who followed the Ochoa-Sorenstam-Pettersen group) and Hank Kurz, Jr. (who followed the D'Alessio-Wie-Lucidi group). Both pretty darn good stories--see what happens when Doug Ferguson goes back to the PGA? By the way, the Friday pairings are interesting: Ai-chan pulled the 7:15 am straw, it looks like, while Wie's group is the first after the early afternoon prime time quadrant off the back; McKay's group, meanwhile, is the last off the back. It'll be interesting to see how the weather holds up today and whether as many in this morning groups will be able to go 65 or below as Thursday's (4)--not to mention whether the course starts asserting itself more (for all the 63s it has given up, its winning scores haven't been all that low over the few years it's been played).]
[Update 7 (4:06 am): One of the reasons scores haven't been so low in recent years has been spring weather in Williamsburg, and this week looks to be no exception. There's an 80% chance of thunderstorms in the early morning today--even by late afternoon the odds are pretty decent that a scattered thunderstorm will interrupt play. To top it off, there's a tornado watch in the region, so the winds should be quite heavy and gusty. Forget going low: the morning groups will have to grind it out and most likely deal with multiple weather delays. Going off in the afternoon may turn out to be quite the advantage, unless there are so many delays they get less than 9 holes in later today....]
[Update 8 (9:22 am): Be sure to check out the local reporting on the Michelob Ultra!]
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