Lorena Ochoa
Mexico
Lorena Ochoa (born in Guadalajara, Jalisco on 15 November 1981) is a Mexican golfer who plays on the US-based LPGA Tour and is currently the number one ranked female golfer in the world. As the first Mexican golfer of either gender to be ranked number one in the world, she is considered one of the best Mexican golfers of all time.
Ochoa grew up next door to the Guadalajara Country Club and took up golf at the age of five. She won her first state event at the age of six and her first national event at seven. All told as a junior she captured 22 state events in Guadalajara and 44 national events in Mexico. She won five consecutive titles at the Junior World Golf Championships and in 2000 she enrolled at the University of Arizona in the United States on a golf scholarship. While a student, with regular tutoring she greatly improved her English by watching movies and reading magazines between practice and tournaments.
She was very successful in women’s collegiate golf in the next two years, winning the NCAA Player of the Year Awards for 2001 and 2002, finishing runner-up at both the 2001 and 2002 NCAA National Championship and being named to the National Golf Coaches Association (NGCA) 2001 All-America First team. She won the 2001 Pac-10 Women’s Golf Championships, was named PAC-10 Freshman/Newcomer of the Year 2001 and was All Pac-10 First team in 2001 and 2002.
In her sophomore year she had eight tournament wins in ten events she entered and set an NCAA record with seven consecutive victories in her first seven events. She won the Golfstat Cup in both 2001 and 2002. The Cup is given to the player who has the best scoring average versus par with at least 20 full rounds played during a season. setting the single-season NCAA scoring average record as a freshman at 71.33 and beating her own record the next year by just over a stroke per round with a 70.13 average.
Ochoa left university after her sophomore year to turn professional. She won three of ten events played on the 2002 Futures Tour, and topped the money list to earn membership on the LPGA Tour for the 2003 season. She was also Duramed FUTURES Tour Player of the Year.
In her rookie season on the LPGA Tour she gained eight top-10 finishes including runner-up finishes at the Wegmans Rochester and Michelob Light Open at Kingsmill ending the season as the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year and ninth on the LPGA official money list. In 2004 she won her first two LPGA Tour titles: the Franklin American Mortgage Championship (where she became the first Mexican born player to win on the LPGA Tour) and the Wachovia LPGA Classic. That same year she placed in the top ten in three of the four major championships.
In 2005, she won the Wegman’s Rochester LPGA. In 2006, her first round score of 62 in the Kraft Nabisco Championship tied the record for lowest score ever by a golfer, male or female, in any major tournament. Her playoff loss to Karrie Webb marked her best finish until 2007 in an LPGA major. By the end of the year she won six tournaments, topped the money list and claimed her first LPGA Tour Player of the Year award. She also won the LPGA Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average on the LPGA Tour.
In April 2007, Ochoa overtook Annika Sorenstam to become the world number one ranked golfer.
In August 2007, Ochoa won her first major championship at the historic home of golf, the Old Course at St. Andrews, with a wire-to-wire win by four shots at the Women’s British Open. She won the next two LPGA events, the CN Canadian Women’s Open and the Safeway Classic, the first to win three consecutive events since Annika Sorenstam in 2005.
Also in 2007, Ochoa became the first woman ever to earn more than US$4,000,000 in a single season, surpassing Annika Sorenstam’s previous record of $2,863,904.
In April 2008, Ochoa won her second major championship, this time at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, becoming the first golfer to win consecutive LPGA majors since Sorenstam in 2005. She celebrated this victory in the traditional fashion for the Kraft Nabisco by jumping into the pond on the 18th green. The following week, she won the Corona Championship in her home country by 11 strokes. This gave her the final tournament win she needed to qualify for the World Golf Hall of Fame, although she cannot be inducted until 2012, after she completes ten seasons on the LPGA Tour.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Lorena Ochoa”.
