Inbee Park defended her Wegmans LPGA Championship with a come-from-behind, sudden-death playoff victory over Brittany Lincicome, who was "shaking like a leaf" down the stretch of Sunday’s nail-biting finish to the tour’s fourth major championship of the season.
Inbee Park defeats ‘nervous’ Brittany Lincicome in LPGA Championship playoff
Lincicome succumbs to nerves in losing in overtime toPark in LPGA Championship.
Mark Konezny-USA TODAY Sports
One putt away from her second major and sixth LPGA title, Lincicome missed an 8-foot par putt on the 72nd hole of regulation while Park’s clutch birdie on the 17th and 15-footer for par on 18 forced the playoff. When Park made a par on the 18th in overtime and Lincicome again bogeyed the hole, the five-time major champion’s rebound from two back with two to play was complete.
“I just need to learn how to control the nerves a little bit more. I was really, really nervous coming down the stretch, especially the 18th hole and in the playoff,” Lincicome said after Park won for the second time this season. “That putt that I had, the first putt, and then the chip that I had, I was shaking like a leaf. It’s hard to do anything when you’re shaking. I feel like I was like -- I don’t know what I had, but it’s just not a fun feeling.”
Park, steady for most of the final round, was able to channel the tension of the nerve-racked playoff into her 11th tour win.
“When I was going to the tee for the playoff I think that’s when everything really started to come into my mind because I actually have an opportunity to win this tournament,” said Park, who triumphed in the tour’s final event in Rochester after a run of 38 years in the upper New York State area. “I think having the experience definitely helped. It kind of flashed back how I played last year here in the playoff, and I felt a lot more comfortable after thinking that I’ve been into many playoffs so it’ll be just another one.”
Park, who finished at 2-under 70 to Lincicome’s 71 to get to 11-under 277, bested Catriona Matthew on the third playoff hole last year at Locust Hill.
Winning is not exactly a foreign concept to Park, who captured the first three majors of the 2013 season and went on to a six-victory tour campaign:
Inbee Park has win 4 of the last 9 majors. #dynasty
— Kelly Tilghman (@KellyTilghmanGC) August 17, 2014 The 26-year-old from South Korea became the first player to defend the tourney since Annika Sorenstam did so in 2005.
Lincicome, the 2009 Kraft Nabisco champion, has not chalked up a W since the 2011 Canadian Women’s Open and conceded that the pressure of the situation got to her.
“Not being in this position for a while,” said the 28-year-old Floridian, “I think it all caught up with me.”
With her win, Park broke the Americans’ stranglehold on the 2014 majors. Lexi Thompson took the Kraft Nabisco, Michelle Wie (sidelined from the fourth of five grand slam events with a wrist injury) won the U.S. Women’s Open, and Mo Martin earned the Women’s British Open.
