By Dave Shedloski

Cherry Hills Village, Colo. – Morgan Pressel and Brittany Lang had every reason to feel a jolt of pain after watching Birdie Kim sink a remarkable bunker shot on the 72^nd hole to win the 60^th U.S. Women’s Open.

But probably no one hurt more Sunday than Lorena Ochoa.

Pressel and Lang, a pair of precocious and talented amateurs, shot 75 and 71, respectively, at Cherry Hills Country Club to tie for second place, two strokes behind Kim, who ended up at 3-over-par 287 for the championship.

Yet it was Ochoa, the 23-year-old rising star on the LPGA Tour, who had the championship in her hands and let it slip away with one disastrous hole that was on par with the 72^nd-hole debacle that cost Jean Van de Velde the 1999 British Open.

Amateur Morgan Pressel challenged up until the end. (Sam Greenwood/USGA)

Ochoa, a native of Guadalajara, Mexico, began the final round five shots off the lead and a second straight come-from-behind victory – she won the Wegmans Rochester LPGA with a closing 65 – bogeyed the third hole to fall to 7 over par for the championship.

She remained mired in that position until catching a hot streak on the inward nine. She birdied 10, 11 and 13, and then drained a 10-foot birdie putt at 16 to claw back to second place, at 4 over par and just one off the lead.

"I thought I was going to win the tournament," Ochoa said she was thinking as she made her way to the long par-4 18^th hole.

Instead, she made a quadruple-bogey eight. She chunk-pulled her drive into the water, re-teed and hit her third into the rough. After gouging out short of the green, her fifth shot flew into the grandstands behind the putting surface. A poor chip and two putts erased her four birdies – and any chance of winning because Lori Kane at posted 6 over par four groups earlier.

"I just gave it away, the tournament," said Ochoa, tears in her eyes. "I fought so hard for 71 holes and just the last one, you know … I feel really sad and that’s the way golf is."

Kane comforted Ochoa afterward and told her to keep her chin up. That’s exactly what the veteran from Canada did in tying for fourth with Natalie Gulbis at 290. Kane, 40, put together the day’s only sub-par round when she finished the arduous three closing holes in birdie-birdie-par for a 69.

"Knowing how tough it is out there, I’m happy. My goal was the top-10 at the start of the day, and I really played well all the way around," said Kane, who picked up a share of second-place money with Gulbis, $272,723, because of the two amateurs who finished in front of them.

Gulbis had a chance to break par as well but bogeyed the last for 71, one of four players to shoot even par. She had no idea when she finished that she was tied for the clubhouse lead. "Is that what it is?" she asked, before adding, "I wish I’d have known."

Gulbis stayed in the hunt with two birdies on the back nine, her first since the fourth hole of the second round.

Lang, 19, who recently helped the Duke women’s golf team to the NCAA Division I championship, hadn’t been a consideration since the first round, when she opened with a 69 for a share of the lead. A member of the U.S. Curtis Cup team, Lang was every bit as impressive as Ochoa down the stretch. She birdied four of 11 holes before barely missing a 10-foot par putt at the 18^th. Still, she knocked out Kane and Gulbis and was the new clubhouse leader until Kim’s heroics.

"I didn’t look at a scoreboard the whole day," said Lang, of McKinney, Texas, whose goal in her first U.S. Women’s Open was to, "just have some fun and play a great golf course."

Later she admitted seeing one leaderboard. "I saw my name was on the leaderboard. That’s all I needed to know. I knew I was somewhere back in it. I didn’t look at any numbers. I think that helped me."

It fell to Pressel to try and match Kim coming home, and the 17-year-old prodigy from Boca Raton, Fla., was up to the task in her third appearance in the national open. Pressel, who began the day tied for the lead with Karen Stupples and Michelle Wie, sank a 25-foot birdie putt at the second for the outright lead, but three bogeys in a row starting at four dropped her behind Kim.

Twice more she caught Kim, the second when the latter woman bogeyed 16 while Pressel was making a gutsy 15-foot par-saving putt from off the green. Two more pars and a perfect drive over the water at 18 seemed to put Pressel in position for at least a tie, and maybe an outright victory if Kim couldn’t get up and down from the greenside bunker up ahead.

When Kim inexplicably holed the shot, Pressel felt the dagger. She put her head in her hands and bent over, as if in pain.

"I was like, ‘I can’t believe she did that to me," said Pressel, the youngest woman ever to qualify for the Open when she played in the ’01 tournament at age 12. "She hit a great shot. Then I had to hole it. If I made bogey, it didn’t really matter."

Pressel landed her second shot short of the green trying to get the ball close to the front right flagstick position, but her ball kicked into the high rough. Her chip to tie raced by and she had to settle for bogey and second place.

She was disappointed, yet pleased with her play.

"It was a great experience," she said. "I know that I can win. I was right there the whole way. I played pretty well all week. Today wasn’t my day."

.

She wasn’t alone.

Dave Shedloski is a free-lance writer whose work has appeared previously on www.uswomensopen.com.