A golfer on a hot streak at a tournament gives off a messianic vibe. The gallery builds from hole to hole as spectators are swept up in the momentum and excitement, and the roar of the crowd as each putt drops calls out across the course to draw still more fans. Rather than sermons, loaves, and fishes, the golfer deals out great shots, birdies, and eagles, but these are manna from heaven for the golf fan there to see them.
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I picked up Sorenstam on the first fairway just after her 8:40 AM tee-off Friday. She hit her second shot on the par-five hole into the rough near the throat of the fairway in front of the green, chipped up, and made the putt for birdie. Caught at a fairway crosswalk by a threesome coming through that included Loraine Lambert already at three under par after four holes, I briefly considered following the group in hopes of catching Lambert on a hot streak. Sorenstam, however, was the undeniable story–how she would react to the heightened attention and expectations–so I hustled through when the ropes opened and caught up with her. It was the right decision; I’d chosen the mounting exhilaration of a golfer on a roll. Sorenstam, followed by about 100 fans at this point, not only survived the hype, she exulted in it.
Rain started on the fifth hole, stopped, then started again, yet as Sorenstam ended her foray out to one of the more distant reaches of the course and came closer to the clubhouse, more fans joined a gallery that now numbered in the hundreds. People living in the town houses alongside the course came out to watch her pass–a man and boy across a lake on one hole, a woman drying a dish on a back porch on another, two women at the end of a long porch off an upstairs bedroom on a third. The gallery was a mixture of men and women, many with kids in tow, some with their Annika buttons attached to backpacks that were filled with provisions for the day. There were even a couple of women with daughters in strollers, one holding an umbrella over the head of a dour little girl in a DKNY T-shirt who seemed confused about why all these people should be walking in the rain.
When Sorenstam’s group began the back nine, I decided to go to the 18th green, check the leader board, and find out who else there was to see before meeting up with them on their way in. Dina Ammaccapane was six under par, but through 14 holes to Sorenstam’s 9. Her sister, Danielle, who’d started on the 10th tee, got to 18 five under after acing the par-three 17th. By the time I caught up with Dina out on the course, she was dropping back. Both sisters finished the day at 68.
Amazingly, it wasn’t alone as the low round of the day. Rosie Jones, a tall, tousle-haired player in the classic Juli Inkster mode, also shot a 62. For a while on Saturday, when I watched on TV from home, the better to see all the leaders’ shots–and to avoid the cold and wind of a brutal last day of May–Jones even went ahead at 12 under, as Sorenstam had three-putt bogeys at 12 and 13. Yet Sorenstam fired another brilliant fairway wood at 14–you could see her psyching herself as she walked up the fairway–and she birdied every hole coming in to claim a two-shot second-round lead over Scotland’s Mhairi McKay, who seemed to make every putt she had, while Jones slipped back to 11 under.
