Schaer Street Loop

I walked the Schaer Street Loop this morning in 1:16:53.

Here's a story from the Associated Press (edited for Pam's Boy)

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — I.K. Kim did everything necessary to win a major, except for one, the easiest, the simplest. She hit every green and played seventeen consecutive bogey-free holes to shoulder from the pack during the frantic final round at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. She stepped onto the eighteenth green, two putts from an all-but-certain title. Her first, from fifteen feet, stopped less than a foot away. Her second, again, from less than a foot, from perhaps eight inches, spun around the cup and rolled out. Fuck. Kim raised her left hand to her mouth and turned her head, unwilling to look at what had just happened at her feet. Fans at Mission Hills gasped, groaned, and screamed in a chorus of pain. "I played straight, and it actually just broke to the right," Kim said.

After tapping in for a bogey that dropped her into a tie, Kim raised both hands to her ears. She left the green, elbows in front of her as she stared down blankly at the bridge while walking to the scorers' tent, and into golf infamy.

Sun Young Yoo seized an improbable second chance to win the LPGA Tour's first major of the season with an eighteen-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole Sunday, earning her first major title. "I thought I had no chance," Yoo said. "I thought I.K. was going to make the putt, but it didn't happen."

The playoff ended four strokes later, with Sun Young Yoo confidently seizing her second career LPGA Tour victory when Kim couldn't relocate her groove. "On the playoff hole, it's just hard to kind of focus on what's going on right now," Kim said. "Because I was still a little bit bummed [about] what happened on eighteen, honestly."

Yoo also lurked in the pack with steady play while five players held the lead Sunday. After finishing with a par in the group before Kim, Yoo figured she would collect a fat runner-up check and head home to Orlando.

And then Kim made a mistake reminiscent of Scott Hoch's missed two-foot putt that would have won the 1989 Masters, and Doug Sanders' miss on a three-footer to win the 1970 British Open.

"She's a great putter," Yoo said about Kim. "She really doesn't miss those kinds of putts, but ... that's golf. You never know what's going to happen. I was just watching from the putting green, and that's some luck."

Yoo got to make the traditional leap into the frigid waters of Poppie's Pond, while Kim's miss on the Dinah Shore course will go down in LPGA Tour infamy.

Kim has more than $182,000 to console her — along with the knowledge she had been the most consistent contender amid the wild momentum swings of the final round. She made a fifteen-foot birdie putt on the sixteenth and a twenty-footer on the seventeenth to break a three-way tie for the lead. "It was unfortunate on eighteen, but I feel good about my game," Kim said. "It's getting better."

Yoo and Kim played the eighteenth again in the playoff, and Kim's drive barely cleared the water, landing in the rough. She left a birdie putt short from the fringe, and Yoo calmly reached the green before burying her winning putt.

Yoo, who joined Grace Park as the only South Korean winners of the Kraft Nabisco, seemed reluctant to celebrate after hugging Kim, but then joined her caddie for a leap into Poppie's Pond. Yoo surpassed three-million dollars in career earnings with her three-hundred thousand dollar share of the two-million dollar purse.

"It's huge," said Yoo, who began the final round in a five-way tie for fourth. "I didn't think about winning today. I didn't want to let myself down, but I think I did better than what I was expecting."

Kim and Yoo shot sixty-nine in the final round.

Top-ranked Yani Tseng finished third at eight under with a final-round seventy-three. Even after blowing a Sunday lead at the Kraft Nabisco for the second straight year, the Taiwanese star had a chance to join the playoff on the eighteenth, but hit her ninety-yard approach twenty-feet past, and putted her birdie attempt wide by an inch. Yet even the world's best player was thinking about Kim afterward. "I feel so bad for her," Tseng said. "I wish she had made it."

Defending champion Stacy Lewis closed strong with a sixty-six to finish in a four-way tie for fourth place with Amy Yang and late leaders Karin Sjodin — who shot a seventy-four after entering the final round even with Tseng and leading at the turn — and Hee Kyung Seo, who had a three-stroke lead on the back nine before bogeying her final four holes.

Yoo had never finished higher than seventh in a major, and she began the final round three strokes off the lead. She bounced back from two early bogeys with three birdies in five holes down the stretch, finishing with three straight pars — and after Kim's historic miss, seized an unlikely opportunity to win. "I was here by myself," Yoo said. "I just wish my family was here. My phone is still in my golf bag. I can't wait to make some phone calls to my family."

Tseng gave away her share of the final-round lead in the first two holes to Sjodin, who went three strokes ahead with an eagle on the second hole. The winless Swede gave away the lead to Seo with back-to-back bogeys around the turn, but Seo made bogeys on the fifteenth and sixteenth, briefly creating a four-way tie with two holes to go.: