Lorena Ochoa Wins ADT Championship

The Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The ADT Championship was truly a rags-to-riches moment for Lorena Ochoa.

Ochoa had taken a four-shot lead with two holes to play going to the 17th green at Trump International, and the $1 million payoff seemed as secure as an armored truck.

Fifteen minutes later, after Ochoa chopped up the 17th hole with a double bogey and Natalie Gulbis made birdie, the lead was down to one. And a few minutes after that, Gulbis was 15 feet away for birdie on the 18th as Ochoa stared at a nasty lie in the rough.

Ochoa was one mistake away from perhaps the biggest collapse of her career, the first hint of drama Sunday.

``It was fun for the fans and for all of you,'' Ochoa said. ``But it didn't feel very good.''

The atonement was simply amazing.

Only able to see the top half of the golf ball that was buried in the rough, with water separating the 161 yards between Ochoa and the 18th flag, she opened the face of her 6-iron, took a high, steep swing and hit a shot worth $1 million.

The ball landed on the front of the green, caught a slope and stopped 30 inches from the cup. The distance became even shorter when Gulbis, needing a birdie for any hope, left her putt well short of the hole.

``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.''

One final birdie gave Ochoa a 4-under 68 and a two-shot victory over Gulbis in the season-ending ADT Championship to claim the $1 million prize, the richest in women's golf.

Ochoa wrapped up her sensational season with eight victories, joining Annika Sorenstam and Nancy Lopez as the only players to do that over the last 30 years. Having already broken the LPGA Tour record for most earnings in a year, the $1 million stretched it even more to $4,364,944. And she went over $10 million in career earnings.

All of this was too much for Ochoa to take.

``It's all about breaking records,'' Ochoa said. ``It was not only about the money list, but winning eight tournaments this season. It's been amazing from start to end. I think the only thing I can do is just go home and celebrate.''

Gulbis had to settle for a 70, the only other player under par, and $100,000. Third place went to Paula Creamer after a 72.

Ochoa plans to celebrate in typical fashion.

She said she would donate $100,000 to a relief fund in Tabasco, Mexico, for flood victims. A good chunk of it will go to her foundation in Guadalajara, 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.

After the scores were reset after the second and third rounds and half the field eliminated each of those days, the $1 million came down to eight players who all had equal opportunity.

Ochoa was the only one who seemed to be playing a different course.

She birdied the second and third holes to quickly put her name atop the leaderboard, made a 12-foot par save on the next hole, and added two more birdies to pull away. After a chip from behind the par-5 ninth for her fifth birdie, Ochoa was five shots clear.

``I was surprised,'' she said, ``but happy.''

Gulbis and Paula Creamer, who wound up third, were the only ones remotely in range.

Everyone else had vanished at the seventh hole, with the first five players hitting into the water. Karrie Webb found the water twice on her way to a quadruple bogey, and she finished with an 84 for the highest score of her Hall of Fame career on the LPGA Tour.

Gulbis figured it was over when Ochoa kept scratching out pars, and it appeared imminent on the 16th when Ochoa, in a deep bunker some 131 yards away, hit 7-iron to 15 feet to secure another par.

She had said the running joke all week had been to build a three- or four-shot lead heading to the 17th ``in case something happens.''

``And that's exactly what happened,'' she added with a laugh.

Her 8-iron went over the green, and her attempt with a putter out of the fluffy grass came up 20 feet short down the slope. She gunned that one 6 feet by and missed to take double bogey, after Gulbis holed her birdie putt.

Suddenly, the lead was one.

Her tee shot cut the corner of the lake and the bunker, but wasn't enough to get over the rough. Gulbis, with a hybrid 3-iron from the fairway, hit a beautiful approach to 15 feet that applied even more pressure.

``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.

Ochoa knew she caught it clean, watched it hit the green and listened for the crowd to tell her how special it was. The shot was reminiscent of Se Ri Pak hitting a hybrid to 2 inches in a playoff to the win the LPGA Championship last year, or Shaun Micheel hitting 7-iron to the same distance on the final hole at Oak Hill to win the PGA Championship in 2003.

``The best shot of my career,'' Ochoa said at the trophy presentation. ``Five years, that was the best one. All of you saw that.''

They saw it. And after her year, most came to expect it.