Rookie Wins LPGA Championship

HAVRE DE GRACE, Md., June 14 -- When the week at the McDonald's LPGA Championship began, who among those gathered at Bulle Rock Golf Club could have picked Anna Nordqvist out of a crowd, much less gone over her résumé? Her coach, some tour players, a few caddies, and that would be about it.

The résumé, for what it's worth, looked like this: ranked 214th in the world, with four LPGA Tour events played as a professional, none of them majors. Her best finish on tour: tied for 17th, in something called the Corona Championship. Her 22nd birthday celebration on Wednesday wasn't exactly a late-night affair, because players of her stature are assigned the most obscure tee times on the first day of such tournaments, and Nordqvist went off in the very first group on Thursday.

Next year, though, when Nordqvist returns to the LPGA Championship -- whoever is its sponsor, wherever it is played -- she will do so as the defending champion. Nordqvist made her first professional victory a major championship Sunday with a nearly flawless 68 at Bulle Rock, finishing in 15-under-par 273, easily beating Australian Lindsey Wright, who threatened only briefly on the back nine and finished four back.

And when Nordqvist finished, even after she had been doused with champagne, she had this to say: "I'm speechless. I don't know what to say."

That, then, is basically how Nordqvist introduced herself to the golfing world: by quietly slaying Bulle Rock's 6,633-yard layout, mixing in only the occasional fist pump, and then acting even more measured off the course. In that rather Swedish fashion, in the first year of retirement for Swedish legend Annika Sorenstam, a new Swede arrived.

"That's what makes it so much more impressive: pressure," said Louise Stahle, a compatriot who played with Nordqvist at Arizona State. "Sweden is hoping, as she gets closer, this could be it."

If Nordqvist was at all rattled by the situation -- carrying a two-shot lead into the final round -- she showed it not at all. And even as she shot 66 in the first round and was in or near the lead every day over the course of the week, she did little to expound on the situation, her emotions, whether she thought she was ready. Indeed, she seemed not inclined to talk about herself.

"It's a lot about the Swedish culture," Melissa Luellen, her college coach, said in a telephone interview Sunday. "The Swedish culture is that they don't want to do anything that is going to draw extra attention to themselves. It's very honorable, and actually very un-American. Americans would say, 'Hey, look at me.' But the Swedish culture, they don't want that, and Anna fits right in with that."

For much of the final round, it seemed hardly anyone was noticing Nordqvist, or any of the players in contention. The LPGA Tour will take ownership of this championship next year, but it will not be played at Bulle Rock, which hosted the event for five years, nor be sponsored by McDonald's. The galleries Sunday fit an event that was on its way out of town. When Nordqvist and Wright, the final pairing, hit long approach shots into the fifth green, not a single fan waited to see the shots land.

That setting fit the odd circumstances Nordqvist faced Sunday, even before she teed off. Because Saturday's third round was cut short by a rain delay of more than two hours, Nordqvist and seven other women had to rise early Sunday, finish that round at 7:30 a.m., then head back to the hotel for some rest before teeing off again some six hours later.

If that bothered Nordqvist, she did a superior job of hiding it. Her first hole: Drive down the middle, approach to two feet, kick-in birdie.

"Her motto is: No shortcuts to success," Luellen said. "She's probably the hardest worker that I've ever had. Just an incredibly determined young lady, and incredibly competitive. Get her in a competitive situation, and her whole body lights up."

One moment from the front nine signaled that this might be over early. On the fifth -- a difficult, uphill 389-yard par 4 -- Nordqvist hit her fairway wood into a greenside bunker, then blew the sand shot a good eight feet past the pin. At the time, she led by three, and a bogey would have given Wright some early hope.

Nordqvist, though, played the putt aggressively, and though it used about 359 degrees of the cup's rim, it dropped, a key early par. When Wright three-putted the seventh for bogey, Nordqvist's lead grew to five strokes, and it was going to take both a mini-collapse and a major move from someone else to knock Nordqvist off.

That never really happened. For a nanosecond, Wright pulled within one shot when she birdied the 13th and Nordqvist made her only bogey of the day, a three-putt. Nordqvist's response: birdie at the 14th, birdie at the 15th, title all but locked up.

"I'm not surprised, but I'm impressed," said her current coach, Katarina Vangdal, who has worked with Nordqvist since she was 16. "She's got the game in her. She's never been in this situation before. I'm so impressed."

For emphasis, if nothing else, Nordqvist took a fairway wood on the 422-yard closing hole, leading by three. Nerves? Nah. She drilled it, and it settled two feet from the cup. When she holed that, her final birdie of a week she won't forget, Stahle, Vangdal and a couple of other friends charged from the side of the green, champagne in hand, hugs to follow. It was, perhaps, the only time she was surprised all week.

"Obviously, it's a great feeling," she said. "I think it's going to take a couple days to realize that I actually won."