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Updated Tuesday, June 10, 2008 0:00 am TWN, AP

Taiwan’s Tseng beats veterans to win LPGA

Yani Tseng, of Taiwan, holds the trophy after winning the LPGA Championship golf tournament on the 18th hole in a sudden death playoff against Maria Hjorth at Bulle Rock Golf Course in Havre de Grace, Md. Sunday. (AP)

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Taiwan’s Tseng beats veterans to win LPGA

Hjorth surged into the lead with her unlikely birdie off the rocks on the par-5 15th, and chipping in from 15 feet for birdie on the next hole to lead by one. But she missed the 17th green, failing to save par with a 4-foot putt to fall into a tie with Hjorth.

Ochoa opened with a 10-foot birdie and didn’t make another one until the par-4 16th.

“I gave myself a lot of birdie chances, but I couldn’t make any putts to get momentum,” Ochoa said. “There’s nothing I can do now. I tried my best.”

She had eagle chances on consecutive holes, both times to get within one of the lead. But she three-putted for par from 45 feet on the 15th, and her eagle pitch from 20 yards lipped out on the 16th.

“I never lost the hope,” she said. “I though something good was going to happen, that miracles exist. But it wasn’t my time.”

A birdie on the final hole gave her a 71 and a tie for third, her seventh consecutive top 10 in a major.

Equally disappointed was Sorenstam, playing the LPGA Championship for the final time and playing well enough to tie Mickey Wright with her fourth title at this major. But she twice missed birdie putts inside 5 feet on par 5s, with a chance to get into the playoff, she left her 15-foot birdie putt well short.

“I left a lot of shots out there,” Sorenstam said. “I wish I could have converted one or two; it would have been enough. But I didn’t.

Both were part of the carnage on the 13th in which the top six on the leaderboard were a combined played the toughest hole at Bulle Rock in 7-over par.

Hjorth had the highest score — a double bogey — and it helped save the tournament.

She pulled her tee shot and it hit a spectator and bounded into waist-high native grasses, so thick that no one could find the ball. She went back to the tee, this shot was in the right rough, from about the same spot where Tseng scrambled for bogey.

With sheer strength, Hjorth pounded it out of the rough onto the front of the green, then two-putted from about 40 feet.

Sorenstam missed the green to the right from the middle of the fairway, her chip ran over the cup, but her 4-foot par attempt never hit the hole. That ended a streak of 42 consecutive holes at Bulle Rock without a bogey.

Worse yet, she never made another birdie the rest of the way.

Jee Young Lee, who started the final round with a one-shot lead over Hjorth, had a double bogey on the 13th and a triple bogey two holes later and closed with a 78.

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