Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam fired seven birdies in a five-under par 66 final round on Sunday to win the LPGA Michelob Ultra Open by seven strokes and capture the 72nd crown of her career.
Sorenstam, the former world No. 1 who went winless last year, took her third title of the season with a 72-hole tournament-record total of 19-under par 265 to claim the US$330,000 top prize at the US$2.2 million event.
“I feel great. The season has started very well,” Sorenstam said. “It’s nice to be back playing some good golf. I feel like I’m in control of the golf ball again. It’s a nice feeling.”
Sorenstam, 37, won for the 27th time in the past 30 events which she has led entering the final round. It was her second title in as many starts after taking the Stanford International Pro-Am two weeks ago.
She began the day with a three-stroke edge and after a bogey at the second made birdies at the par-5 third plus the sixth and 10th. She also birded four of five holes starting at the 13th before concluding with a bogey.
“This was a very special one,” Sorenstam said. “I love coming here. It’s a great golf course. I haven’t played well here in the past. I really wanted to do something big this week.”
Sorenstam did, with three of her lowest four rounds in the past two years coming this week. Back and neck injuries hampered the eight-time LPGA Player of the Year and 10-time major champion last year.
But she looks ready to bid for world number one honors again after surrendering the top spot to Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa some 13 months ago.
“It’s great to be back playing good golf again,” Sorenstam said. “Getting back to number one is going to be very tough because Lorena is playing so well. She won a lot of tournaments last year and has five this year.
“But I’m just enjoying winning again and I’ll just take each tournament as it comes.”
Sorenstam’s four-round total matched the course record for pros set by Scott Hoch in 1996 when the Kingsmill course hosted a PGA event, and broke the former LPGA tournament mark of Australian Karrie Webb.
South Korean Jeong Jang, Sorenstam’s nearest rival most of the day, birdied the fifth and ninth holes but ended with a bogey to fall into a four-way share of second on 272. Also sharing second were Americans Allison Fouch and Christina Kim and Britain’s Karen Stupples with Australian Katherine Hull on 273 and Taiwan’s Candie Kung and Sweden’s Sophie Gustafson on 274. Sorenstam’s season winnings jumped to US$1.2 million but she still trails Ochoa by just over US$300,000 on the LPGA season money list. Ochoa shared 12th on 277 after a disappointing week.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier