NSW Open Leader doesn't want to know

BY Liz White | ALPG Tour | 2010 Women's NSW Open | Round One | 05 Feb 2010

Kiwi golfer Sarah Nicholson may be leading the Bing Lee/Samsung NSW Women’s Open but she dare not ask her mother how she’ll fare tomorrow.

Nicholson revealed in her post round interview that her mother, Sue, is the star medium in the hit reality television show, Sensing Murder.

Such is her faith in her Mum’s psychic abilities that Sarah never requests a prediction.

“I don’t want to know … I don’t do that. I like to think I have control over what I do on the golf course,” she said.

Fresh from her birdie blitzing 6 under 66 at the Oatlands Course, Nicholson said her Mum was famous in New Zealand and is such a good psychic that she has a 5- year waiting list.

“It is pretty hard not to believe when you know what she does, but it is very hard to believe if you haven’t experienced it,” she said.

And it’s something Nicholson has experienced first hand. In 2006, the night before the final round of the Australian Women’s 72-hole stroke play, Nicholson, then an amateur, was on the phone to her Mum.

“I had an absolutely terrible round and she said: ’you will win tomorrow’ and I am like: ’what? you don’t even know what you are talking about. I am six shots behind do you know what that means?,’” Nicholson laughed.

“She doesn’t even know what a birdie is and yet sure enough I was six behind and I won by a shot.

“When she told me I thought she was a bit balmy, but yeah, she proved me wrong.”

The 26-year-old will take a one shot lead into tomorrow’s second round over Gold Coast based Japanese player, Hiromi Kamata, and 21-year-old Sydneysider, Sarah Oh, who was making a few predictions of her own.

“Stick with my plan the next two days and I should be right,” she said.

The NSW Open is a big test for Oh as she won this event last year and she knows there is added pressure coming in as the defending champ.

Yet today she played solid golf, a bogey on the par 4 11th her only blip in a round which included an eagle on the par 5 6th, where she stiffed it to two feet with a three wood.

“I didn’t feel nervous at all today. It just felt like playing another tournament and just feeling confident over the golf course because I have played the golf course enough.”

In fact Oatlands is a happy hunting ground for Oh. In 2007 she finished leading amateur and in 2008 gave Britain’s Laura Davies a run for her money before finishing second. Last year Oh held onto a four shot lead over Katherine Hull to break through for her first professional win.

As is often the case at Oatlands, Hull is also in the hunt at the NSW Open sitting at 4 under 68, sharing fourth with Victorian amateur Stacey Keating, Sydney’s Rachel Bailey and New Zealand’s Cathryn Bristow. Hull was left to lament a round that “could have been anything.”

“I think that was probably the worst I could have shot because I didn’t play the par fives very well on the front nine,” she said.

“Technically we would play them as par fours in the States so that was kind of disappointing and then I bogeyed 13 so that was really stupid, so it could have easily been a lot better.”

The afternoon players were saying the weather could have been a lot better too. While the early starters played uninterrupted under cloudy skies, the afternoon groups had to endure a 40-minute weather break due to local thunderstorms.

Britain’s Laura Davies, however, was one who welcomed the rest. She had just bogeyed three holes straight when the downpour hit.

“Although the delay didn’t help a lot of players I am sure it helped me,” she said.

“I must admit I was on a bad roll at that time so it was probably a welcome change.”

Davies was even par at the break but hit back with three birdies to finish on three under 69 to share equal 8th with Kingston Heath’s 13-year-old Su_Hyun Oh, Karen Lunn and Wendy Doolan who has made a good recovery from breast cancer suffered last year.

Tomorrow sees the second round of the Open where the players will be cut to the top 60 and ties.

Sarah Nicholson, a prodigious talent who can smack her 3 wood 250 metres “sometimes longer than my driver,” will be hoping the birdies continue.

With just $2,900 in the bank she needs the money to fund a trip to the United States later this year. Remarkably she has no sponsor and is delighted just to have a caddy – Steve Jones, who jumped on her bag for the first time at the Branxton pro-am in December.

“I am thinking I have to win it because that is the only way I am going to get there because I have been struggling for the last three years,” she said.

With a psychic for a mum you just have to ask the question, does her Mum think she will win?

“Basically if I work hard enough it is all going to come together, I am still waiting on it though,” Nicholson said.

Come Sunday afternoon, the saying: “Mothers always know,” may well be proven once and for all.