nov19 ochoa wins adt

Lorena Ochoa could only see the top half of her golf ball that was buried in Bermuda rough. Even more daunting was the water that separated the 161 yards between her and the 18th hole.

No less than $1 million was riding on this shot Sunday at the ADT Championship. “It came out perfect,” she said.

On the verge of an unseemly collapse, Ochoa wrapped up a sensational season with what she called the best shot of her career. Clinging to a one-shot lead over Natalie Gulbis, who was already on the green 15 feet away for birdie, Ochoa hit 6-iron that rolled 30 inches from the cup for one final birdie.

It gave her a 4-under 68 for a two-shot victory in the ADT Championship and the $1 million prize, the richest in women’s golf.

“I had a horrible lie,” Ochoa said. “Because of the conditions, and because I was only one shot leading the tournament, I think it was my best shot so far in my career.”

Even more stunning was how she got into this predicament.

Despite being the No. 1 player in women’s golf, Ochoa has a short history of blowing tournaments, and this would have been a doozy. After blowing away the seven other players who qualified for this 18-hole shootout, she had a four-shot lead with two holes to play.

But she butchered the par-3 17th with an 8-iron over the back of the green, a putt that got hung up in the fluffy rough, and three more putts from 20 feet for a double bogey. Gulbis made a 7-foot birdie putt, narrowing the lead to one shot with one hole to play.

It was about the only drama of the balmy afternoon, certainly more than Ochoa needed.

“It was fun for the fans and for all of you,” she said, “but it didn’t feel very good.”

Ochoa hammered a tee shot over the corner of the lake and the bunker, but it wasn’t enough to hop out of the rough, and the ball sank to the bottom of the grass. Gulbis hit first, a hybrid 3-iron that covered the flag and put even more pressure on Ochoa.

“Lorena was spending a lot of time looking at her lie, so I was assuming that the lie was not very good,” Gulbis said. “She’s the best player in the world, so I thought that at least we’d get kind of an eye-for-an-eye putt at it.”

That thought didn’t last long.

Gulbis made Ochoa’s 30-inch putt look even shorter when her birdie attempt stopped well short of the hole. Even so, Gulbis again showed she’s more than just a glamour girl, giving everything she had in what looked like a hopeless situation. She shot 70, the only other player to break par on a difficult day.

Gulbis, who was paired with Julieta Granada when she won last year, earned $100,000 as the runner-up.

Ochoa finished the year with $4,364,994, having already shattered the record set by Annika Sorenstam five years ago ($2,863,904). Despite a harrowing finish she could have done without, and a quirky format that reset the scores after the second and third rounds, there was no disputing the new queen on the LPGA Tour.

Queen translates to “la reina” in Spanish, pronounced very similar to Lorena.

“It was unbelievable the year she had,” Gulbis said.

Ochoa won for the eighth time this year, joining Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez as the only players to have done that in the last 30 years.

The money was meaningful for other reasons. Ochoa said she would give $100,000 to a relief fund for flood victims in Tabasco, Mexico, and a good chunk to her foundation to buy land for an elementary and high school it is building for underprivileged children.

“I always want to give back,” she said. “And this is a good day.”

She almost gave back too much on the golf course until a shot reminiscent Se Ri Pak winning a playoff last year at the LPGA Championship with a hybrid to 2 inches, and Shaun Micheel winning the 2003 PGA Championship with a 7-iron to the same distance.

Paula Creamer was the only other player under par much of the balmy day until hitting her tee shot into the water on the 18th and escaping with a bogey to finish with a 72. She earned $20,500 for finishing third.

Everyone else cleared the stage much earlier, certainly after taking on the diabolical seventh hole, par 3 to a peninsula green. The first five players found the water, with Karrie Webb going in twice for a quadruple bogey. Webb shot 84, the highest score of her LPGA career.

It was a nerve-racking Sunday, with what looked like $1 million cash stuffed into a glass case on the first tee and a Trump International course that played as tough as it had all week.

Ochoa made it look easy, and for most of the final round, it looked like a runaway.

She made five birdies on her way to a 31, impressive considering the rest of the field averaged 38.7 on the front nine. Heading to the 10th tee, Ochoa had a five-shot lead and showed no signs of folding.

The first hint of any drama came on the 16th, when Ochoa hit into a bunker and faced 131 yards over the water to the green. Gulbis already was 15 feet from the flag, and Ochoa hit 7-iron to about a foot inside her. Both made par.

“It’s never easy,” her caddie, Dave Brooker, said after raking the bunker.

One hole later, Ochoa proved him correct. She had joking told Brooker earlier that the plan was to have a three- or four-shot lead going to the 17th hole “in case something happens.”

“And that’s exactly what happened,” Ochoa said with a laugh. “So I’m happy I did that.”

Even more thrilling was how she recovered. Given her lie in the rough, the 6-iron could have gone anywhere. But it was right where she aimed, a career shot that paid off in a million ways.