Well, we may have jinxed her. Annika shot an uncharacteristic 71 (with 5 bogeys and 5 pars) on Sunday in France. Wendy Doolan tracked her down, shooting 3 birdies and 2 eagles within 5 consecutive holes. She beat Annika by 1 shot. Michelle Wie shot a respectable 69 to recover from her poor round yesterday, but finished well back.
Annika’s pulled into the lead at the Evian Masters. (I’m sure they have really good water there!) You have to marvel at what Annika’s doing on the women’s tour. She’s usually near the lead at every tournament. Remind anyone of Tiger 2000? But what’s different about Annika is that she is so quiet and pleasant in her domination, nothing flashy.
BTW, Michelle Wie had a bad round, +4, largely because of a balky (Scotty Cameron) putter. But when you’re only 14, that’s OK.
Michelle Wie has switched to the Nike driver. Here are great pics (look at Michelle’s coil in the last pic!) from the Evian Masters, where she is -2 after 2 rounds, with the leader Karen Stupples at -10 and Annika and Laura Davies at -9. Full leaderboard here.
Grace Park hits the Nike driver as well, and she hits it well. I haven’t seen Michelle enough to evaluate her drives in this tournament, but will try to catch her drives this weekend. Maybe the switch will be good. We’ll see.
All that Ernie Els needs in points to overtake Tiger in the World Rankings. It almost seems inevitable, the way things are going this year.