By Leonard Shapiro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 9, 2007

HAVRE DE GRACE, Md., June 8 -- Despite a sloppy bogey on her final hole, Michelle Wie made the cut on the number Friday in the LPGA Championship at Bulle Rock on a day of suffocating humidity, high heat and low scoring from Suzann Pettersen, a rising star from Norway who will take a one-stroke lead into the weekend of the second major championship of the season.

In the first major, the Kraft Nabisco in April, Pettersen, 26, had a four-shot advantage through 14 holes in the final round, only to play her last four holes in 4 over to tie for second behind champion Morgan Pressel. Her tears flowed freely that April afternoon in the California desert following her late meltdown, but after a 67 here Friday and 8-under 136 for 36 holes, Pettersen insisted, "I forgot about that a long time ago.

"I don't look at it as a collapse," she said. "I looked at it as what can I do different so I can be stronger when I'm in the same situation."

After what she termed a "boiling" day in 98-degree heat, Pettersen will play Saturday with Australian Hall of Famer Karrie Webb (69-137) in the final pairing. A year ago, Webb lost in a one-hole sudden-death playoff to Se Ri Pak when the popular South Korean hit an approach shot from 201 yards to within three inches of the cup for a kick-in birdie and the title.

Four weeks after her disappointment in Rancho Mirage, Pettersen prevailed in a three-hole playoff at the Michelob Ultra event in Williamsburg, breaking through for her first victory in five years on the LPGA Tour. She's now second on the money list ($723,000) and seems to be the logical heiress apparent to the greatest Scandinavian player of all, Sweden's Annika Sorenstam.

The title transfer might not happen just yet, because Sorenstam remains a formidable player at age 36, even after taking six weeks off this year to deal with a disk injury in her back. In only her second event since that break, Sorenstam remained in contention, despite a double bogey at her 11th hole, with a round of 69. She's tied for fifth in a group that also included young American standouts Pressel (71) and Paula Creamer (68) at 5-under 139.

"I might be a little injured physically," Sorenstam said, "but let me tell you, mentally I'm not. I'm probably as strong as ever. So that's really what keeps me going."

Wie also took nearly four months off from competitive golf when she fractured her left wrist in a fall while running in February. For a second straight day, she never hit her driver, teeing off with 3-woods and hybrid clubs on her round of 2-over 74 for a total of 147, right on the cut line. She and everyone else at 3 under got in when Karen Davies, one of the last players on the course, bogeyed the last hole late in the day.

Wie, a 17-year-old golf prodigy from Hawaii, has never missed a cut in the 13 majors she has played. She said she felt flashes of her old form several times Friday, especially when she made birdies at Nos. 14 and 15 and nearly ran in a 35-foot birdie putt that grazed the cup and somehow stayed out at 17. That near-miss and Wie's wild-right drive into deep rough at the 385-yard 18th nearly cost her a chance to play on the weekend.

Wie's second shot at 18 stayed in the deep right rough and came to rest behind a platform built for spectators using wheelchairs. Wie asked for a ruling and was given line-of-sight relief so she could at least have an unimpeded shot at the green. But her third-shot wedge landed about three yards too short in the fringe, and she left herself with a tough 35-foot par putt that she missed.

Though she didn't know if she had made the cut following her morning round, Wie still had a smile as she left the property. A week earlier, she was 14 over through 16 holes and withdrew from the Ginn Tribute in South Carolina, citing pain in her wrist.

"This is 5,000 times better than last week," Wie said. "My wrist felt a lot better. I felt stronger. I felt like I actually played some pretty good golf. I was 4 over coming into 14, and I knew I had to make two birdies coming in and I did, back-to-back. Those were the kind of holes that show me and other people that I still have it in me."

Wie said she had no idea how long it would take for both wrists to be 100 percent (she also has tendinitis in the right wrist) and that her game remains "a work in progress."

Pettersen, meantime, says she's a better player now than she was at the Kraft Nabisco.

"Kraft was well evaluated," she said. "I had a lot of good putts and I picked up some stuff that I kind of was unaware of -- a few things in my routine that changed on the last couple of holes. For me, it was like what can I do different? It's all about your attitude and how you use your energy and how your state of mind is. Is it ready to perform, or is one bad shot going to drag you down when you hit a hundred good shots?"

Pettersen hit scads of superb shots Friday with seven birdies, five of them after approach shots that landed within two feet of the cup. She pushed to the top of the board with three straight birdies starting at the 15th hole, and Webb was effusive in praise of Pettersen's play after recovering from her own double bogey on her 12th hole of the day.

"Suzann has always had more talent in her little finger than a lot of people out here," Webb said. "It's just been a matter of time before she started playing the way she is. She's putting it all together right now."