Inbee Park Lines Up Her Grand Slam

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/sports/golf/Inbee-Park-Lines-Up-Her-Grand-Slam.html

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All eyes are focused on the top-ranked Inbee Park’s quest this week to win the Women’s British Open Championship and to secure a place in history as the winner of the Women’s Grand Slam.

But even Park knows there are plenty of players ready and willing to steal her thunder at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland.

To earn an unprecedented fourth consecutive major championship in the same calendar year is possible for the red-hot winner of six 2013 tournaments, but Park’s challengers are lining up and taking aim at victory on the venerable Old Course.

This is the second time the Women’s British Open has been played at St. Andrews. In 2007, it was the first professional women’s tournament to be played there.

Park, 25, is on a mission and everybody knows it. Ranked No.1 in women’s golf since April, Park leads the L.P.G.A. in season earnings (more than $2.1 million), putting average (28.52 putts per round), scoring average (69.519), rounds in the 60s (31) and putts per greens in regulation (1.7). She has won the first three majors of the year: the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the L.P.G.A. Championship and the U.S. Women’s Open.

One player who might have the best chance of spoiling Park’s Grand Slam bid is Karrie Webb of Australia, who has won the Women’s British three times — in 2002, and in 1997 and 1995, before the Open was classified as a major.

Like Phil Mickelson who traveled to Europe to play in the Scottish Open a week before his victory at the British Open this year, Webb arrived in Europe a week early for her own Open tuneup. Last week, she won the Ladies European Masters in England, firing a final-round 65 to show that her preparation for Women’s British Open this week is peaking right when she wants to be in top form.

There are other big challengers to Park. The defending champion, Jiyai Shin of South Korea, currently No.8 in the world rankings, won the Women’s British Open last year by nine shots.

She outlasted brutal weather conditions in 2012, in which cold, rain and wind pummeled the championship and forced the playing of 36 holes on the final day.

It was Shin’s second Women’s British Open title, the first having been in 2008 at Sunningdale Golf Club, west of London. Park was the runner-up to Shin last year.

Another contender at the championship could be Yani Tseng of Taiwan, who won back-to-back Women’s British Opens in 2011 and 2010, but Tseng would have to play some of her best golf in months to approach the form she showed two years ago.

The 15-time L.P.G.A. tournament winner started out this season with a runner-up finish at the Women’s Australian Open in February and a tie for third the next week at the L.P.G.A. Thailand tournament, but she has missed three tournament cuts and has struggled with accuracy for most of the year.

Tseng leads the tour in eagles (12) and is ninth in driving distance (265 yards), but she is currently ranked No.91 in greens in regulation and is No.150 in driving accuracy (56 percent).

The player from Taiwan would have to limit her errant shots dramatically at St. Andrews for a chance to earn her third Women’s British Open title.

Catriona Matthew of Scotland is the local favorite this week. The native of North Berwick made the 2009 Women’s British Open her first major championship. Remarkably, she won that event 11 weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, Sophie.

Matthew gave Park a run for her money in early June when she fired a final-round score of 4-under 68 to force a playoff at the L.P.G.A. Championship in Rochester, New York. Matthew and Park played three extra holes at that event, which Park ultimately won.

Matthew witnessed Park’s renowned consistency first hand at that major championship and has admired the winning season the world’s top-ranked player has produced this year.

But the Scot says she wants to be the player holding up the trophy on Sunday on her home soil. She wants nothing more than to capture the Open at a course like St. Andrews — a tract that makes even Scotland natives and former three-time Scottish Amateur champions wistful to win again on familiar turf.

First, however, there’s a matter of getting past Park, the player with the hottest hand in golf.

“Obviously it’s a fantastic roll she’s on, and going for the four majors is an amazing accomplishment,” said Matthew, currently No.10 in the world rankings. “Come Sunday, if she’s up there, you’re going to be worried that she’s going to make a run at you.”

Park could also face a challenge by Stacy Lewis of the United States, to whom she finished second last year as the L.P.G.A.’s 2012 Player of the Year. Lewis is currently ranked No.2 in the world rankings and has 11 top-10 finishes and two victories this season.

But Lewis will have to step up her game this week for her best finish at a 2013 major championship.

In the three other majors this year, she has finished no higher than a tie for 28th at the L.P.G.A. Championship. She tied for eighth at the 2012 Women’s British Open.

Another top challenger could be Suzann Pettersen of Norway, ranked No.4, who enters the tournament with seven top-10 finishes and one victory this season. Long overdue for another major championship victory — her last was at the 2007 L.P.G.A. Championship — the Norwegian tied for third at both the Kraft Nabisco Championship and the L.P.G.A. Championship this year.

But she missed the cut at the 2013 U.S. Women’s Open, and also missed the cut at the Women’s British Open last year.

Pettersen will be looking for momentum this week during the last tournament before the Solheim Cup between Europe and the United States, starting on Aug. 12 in Colorado. If she can play at St. Andrews with the same fire she brings into every Solheim Cup, Pettersen could validate her presence as one of the most formidable players in women’s golf.

But Park is on a roll in her Grand Slam campaign and everybody in the field this week will be staring at the target on her back.

Will history be made? Which player can end Park’s bid to reach a new milestone?

“I loved playing in the Ricoh Women’s British Open at St. Andrews in 2007,” Park said in June. “It was amazing to play the most famous course in the world in such an important tournament, so I can’t wait to return.”