Sorenstam, Creamer in standoff
Paula Creamer wasn’t about to give Annika Sorenstam an inch.
The season-ending ADT Championship in West Palm Beach, Fla., got off to a rocky start Thursday when the top two players on the LPGA Tour got into a tense dispute on the 18th fairway over where Sorenstam should have taken a drop from the hazard.
“Neither one of them was going to budge,” rules official Janet Lindsay said.
After a debate that lasted so long it was almost too dark to finish at Trump International, the ruling ultimately went Sorenstam’s way. She was allowed to go to a ball drop instead of returning to the tee, although she still made double bogey and fell out of a tie for the lead.
Hee-Won Han led with a 5-under-par 67 that essentially went unnoticed.
This round might be remembered as the start of a rivalry between the LPGA Tour’s best players – one the undisputed star who already is in the Hall of Fame, the other a 19-year-old rookie with the moxie to stand up for what she thought was right.
“We were trying to determine where it went in,” Sorenstam said. “We’re standing 220 yards away, and we’re talking about inches.”
Creamer, who finished with a two-putt par for a 68, stared hard at Sorenstam as the Swede spoke to reporters, and the rookie later had an animated discussion with LPGA Tour commissioner Carolyn Bivens and Lindsay.
She said there were no hard feelings. But she didn’t think Sorenstam took the right drop.
“It was her word versus my word,” Creamer said. “I don’t feel that it crossed (the hazard). We’re never going to agree because she saw it differently. … In my heart of hearts, I did not see it cross. It’s her conscience. If she thinks it did, it did.”
Wendy Ward of Edwall, Wash., opened with a 73.
“Morgan Pressel turned pro, two weeks before the 17-year-old goes through the final stage of Q-school and six months before she’s old enough to join the LPGA Tour. Pressel, however, has not given up hope that she can be an LPGA member before her 18th birthday.
If she gets her card through qualifying school Dec. 1-5 in Daytona Beach, Fla., her grandfather said they would ask the LPGA to reconsider its policy that players cannot join the tour until they are 18.
Dunlop Phoenix
David Duval went overseas for his final tournament of the year and wound up in truly foreign territory – atop the leaderboard by one shot over Tiger Woods at the Dunlop Phoenix in Miyazaki, Japan.
Duval kept the ball in play at Phoenix CC and made eight birdies in his round of 6-under 64, putting him in the lead for the first time in three years.
The former No. 1 player has not won since the Dunlop Phoenix four years ago. He has been mired in a mystifying slump brought on by injuries that altered his swing, then confidence after posting so many poor scores. He has made only one cut this year.
World Cup
David Howell teamed with Luke Donald for a 13-under 59 to give England a one-stroke lead after the first round of the World Cup in Vilamoura, Portugal. The United States, represented by Stewart Cink and Zach Johnson, hit 66. No. 25 Cink took the invitation to play after Woods and almost a dozen other higher-ranked Americans declined.