IT wasn’t quite a rummage around some of the hickories, brassies and mashies in the vaults of the British Golf Museum but Michelle Wie has certainly gone back in time.
“I have a 9-wood and an 11-wood in my bag and I think Callaway had to look into their archives to try to accommodate me,” she said with a smile after conjuring a sparkling course-record eight-under 64 to set a brisk early pace in the RICOH Women’s British Open at Kingsbarns.
The said clubs worked a treat. These lofted woods helped propel her into a lofty position as Wie made hay while the sun shone in Fife.
“It was absolutely gorgeous and with the ocean views and everything it almost felt like I was playing back home in Hawaii,” she added with the kind of ringing endorsement that would have had the good folk at the Fife Tourist Board falling over themselves in a giddy lather.
The rain is never far away in this meteorological minefield of a country, though.
At one point of the afternoon, it got wetter than King Neptune’s semmit as a torrential downpour, accompanied by the menacing threat of lightning, caused a couple of suspensions.
Wie was home and dry long before that, of course, and her wonderfully crafted round had her sitting pretty. The early signs were not particularly encouraging, mind you.
“I skulled a lob wedge straight over the green on the second and made a bogey and I was very angry after that,” she said of that little mishap. “I nuked a drive on the next hole and that helped me out.”
From that early bogey, Wie, who finished third in the 2005 British Open at Birkdale as a 15-year-old amateur, mounted a purposeful offensive.
A birdie putt of 15 feet on the fourth got her off and running and, having reached the turn in two-under, Wie really upped the ante on the inward half.
The 27-year-old came charging home in a six-under 30 with a profitable haul of birdies which included three in a row at 16, 17 and 18 as she finished with a flourish.
Wie, who hasn’t won on the LPGA Tour since she earned the fourth title of her career in the 2014 US Women’s Open, has been knocking on the door this season and has five top-five finishes to her name.
Various golfing aches and pains have been a considerable nuisance – she had to withdraw from last month’s US Open with a bad neck – but she was in fine fettle yesterday.
“I struggled quite a lot the last couple of seasons with injuries and when you start to play in pain and start to grind through things you often lose sight of the fact that golf is just a game,” reasoned Wie, who grew up in the spotlight and was playing against the men on the PGA Tour as a teenager during a series of appearances that descended into an awkward exercise in corporate exploitation.
“You always want to win tournaments and be back in that winners’ circle but, at the same time, I’m just trying to enjoy my golf again.”
Wie finished a stroke ahead of the in-form Korean In-Kyung Kim, who has won twice in the last couple of months, with Lindy Duncan a short further back on 66 in her debut in the championship.
A local Kingsbarns caddie, by the name of Ruairi Roberts, certainly helped on that front.
“I don’t have a full-time caddie and I just phoned the caddie master here and got very lucky,” said Duncan, who got on better plotting her way round the links than she did with Roberts’ name. “It’s a crazy spelling. Like R-u-a-i … crazy.”
Lexi Thompson, the world No 2, also benefited from the local knowledge of her bagman, Kevin McAlpine, to post a 67 that was concluded with a putt of 20-feet on the last for a birdie as she tucked herself in among the frontrunners.
Mel Reid, a six-time winner on the Ladies European Tour, also opened with a five-under score but it was her veteran compatriot, Dame Laura Davies, who looked like she would grab a considerable chunk of the opening day limelight as she manoeuvred herself up the leaderboard with a rousing run.
At one point, the 53-year-old, who didn’t enjoy the luxury of a practice round, was six-under through 14 holes as she rolled back the years and dug into her greatest hits with a vintage display.
Just as folk were enjoying the sense of dewy-eyed nostalgia, a spanner was flung into the works with the weather delay and when she resumed, Davies got into a guddle in two bunkers on the 15th and eventually racked up a momentum-shattering double-bogey seven.
A bogey on the next added to the sighing feeling of what might have been but Davies, who won the British title back in 1986, rallied and trundled in a nice putt on the last for a birdie in a 68 that prompted a well deserved pump of the fist.
“That’s the first time in maybe two-and-a-half years that I’ve felt I have achieved something,” said Davies who added that it was her best putting round in “donkey’s years.”
She’s still got it.
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