Park looks to win eighth major
Inbee Park is energized and ready to take aim at her eighth major.
The thumb and back that bothered her in recent years are fine. Though one thing is weighing on the LPGA Hall of Famer entering the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. Someone broke into her house in Las Vegas last week, and she’s still not sure exactly what was taken.
“Talking to police, talking to insurance,” Park said. “It’s so hard when you’re not there trying to figure out what’s lost. I mean, this is the life we get on the road.”
The home crisis aside, Park appears to be in a good place.
The top-ranked South Korean star tops a loaded field at Kemper Lakes in Kildeer, Ill., in the third of five majors on the LPGA Tour schedule. They are trying to conquer a challenging course where the late Payne Stewart won the 1989 PGA Championship for the first of his three majors. And there is no shortage of story lines this week.
There’s Park, trying to win the event for the fourth time. She’ll be teeing off in a powerhouse group with money leader Ariya Jutanugarn and defending champion Danielle Kang.
“I’m really happy to play with them,” Park said. “I know Ariya has been having a great season. Danielle is the defending champion of this championship, so yeah, they both have good momentum going into this week. Good momentum is a good thing to have in a group.”
If Park doesn’t win, maybe Jutanugarn will. She’s a nine-time tour winner with two majors — including this year’s U.S. Women’s Open. Then again, older sister Moriya Jutanugarn is third on the money list.
There’s Michelle Wie, trying to win a second major to go with the 2014 U.S. Women’s Open. There’s Lexi Thompson, ranked third overall and with nine tour victories. And there’s Kang, who had a major breakthrough at last year’s KPMG.
She birdied the final hole at Olympia Fields — about 60 miles south of Kemper Lakes — and beat 2016 winner Brooke Henderson for her first LPGA victory in her 144th start. It remains her only one, despite five top 10 finishes in 24 appearances since then.
Park comes in seeking her 20th tour victory. She won this event and its forerunner, the LPGA Championship, from 2013 to 2015 and would love nothing more than to add a fourth title.
U.S. Senior Open
On the pitcher’s mound, John Smoltz never shied away from pressure.
This week, the man considered by some to be the most clutch postseason pitcher in baseball history finds himself dealing with an entirely new sort of stress.
The Hall of Famer qualified for a spot in the U.S. Senior Open, which starts Thursday in Colorado Springs, Colo. Instead of delivering the nasty stuff, he’ll be trying to avoid it on a Broadmoor East Course that ate up the seniors 10 years ago for this tournament — won by Eduardo Romero, whose 6-under was one of only three scores in the red for the week.
“I love pressure,” Smoltz said in an interview this month, shortly after he won a three-man playoff to qualify. “But I don’t think people understand this is a different kind of pressure. This has more to do with the difference between what I’m accustomed to doing on a daily basis of average golf versus what this tournament is, which is ‘ One bad swing, and see ya.’”
The 51-year-old grew up in Michigan and, brought up in a world of indoor sports, said he saw very little value in golf.
“I didn’t appreciate the history involved,” he said. “I didn’t find it to be as athletic a sport as the others.”
Only out of sheer boredom while playing Class A ball in Florida did Smoltz wander out to the golf course where, like all the other sports he played, he taught himself.
He became good and, as his baseball career progressed, he found himself playing on off days with his Atlanta Braves teammates.
As one of greatest control pitchers ever, Smoltz says there are some elements of baseball that transfer over to golf — namely keeping his weight back to create leverage and power for the pitch or the swing.
But the mental parts of these games, in Smoltz’s view, are much different.
“In baseball, it’s having this tunnel where you’re throwing to a catcher. In golf, there’s all this space and awareness of what’s out there,” he said. “That’s why maybe I hit better shots out of the woods, where it’s narrow shots through a small gap. I’m more in my element.”