Ochoa wins Women's British for first major

Golf Betting Lines

08/05/2007 - St. Andrews, Scotland (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - This time there would be no meltdown, no miraculous shot from another player, no doubt about it.

Lorena Ochoa has her first major championship.

The Mexican star closed with a one-over 74 in the final round Sunday to win the Women's British Open by four shots, ending her 0-fer in major championships with a weekend of steady golf on the Scottish coast while all the pressure of dubious past performances in the majors rested on her slight frame.

She seemed to handle it with ease, protecting her first-round 67 with three scores of 74 or better to finally gain that last bit of validation for her now-unassailable No. 1 ranking.

No one -- not Annika Sorenstam, not previous foil Karrie Webb -- could stop Ochoa this time. Her stunning 16-month run to the top of the women's game has its climax.

"It was a great day," she said.

Ochoa finished at five-under 287. She led after each of the four rounds, a fine achievement in the first professional women's tournament ever hosted by storied St. Andrews.

Tiger Woods also went wire-to-wire for his second win at St. Andrews in 2005.

"It's really hard to describe and I think it's not going to be easy to realize what just happened," Ochoa said, responding to her status as the first woman to win on the course.

Several players took stabs at Ochoa's lead early on, but there were only three other survivors to par when all was said and done. Jee Young Lee and Maria Hjorth had matching 71s in the final round to finish at one-under 291.

Reilley Rankin also shot a 71 and was alone in fourth place at even-par.

Sorenstam, who was within five shots of Ochoa after six holes, went five-over par on her last 12 holes and tumbled all the way into a tie for 16th place at four-over 296.

Looking for a jolt to her middling play, Sorenstam didn't come close to getting it. She closed with rounds of 77 and 76 on the weekend.

"I'm swinging as good as I can. I'm putting as well as I can, but it is just not coming together," Sorenstam said. "It was just one of those weeks."

The 25-year-old Ochoa had never won a major before Sunday, but she didn't lack opportunities.

She squandered a seven-shot lead in the final round of last year's Kraft Nabisco Championship and was beaten in a playoff by Webb. It was a record- tying meltdown at the modern women's majors, one that almost felled her in regulation.

Many remember Webb's miraculous hole-out eagle from the fairway at the 18th hole that Sunday, and for good reason. But lost in the mix was Ochoa's own eagle moments later, set up by a gutsy five-wood into the 18th green at Mission Hills.

Ochoa was in the mix until the last hole of the 2005 U.S. Women's Open, then suffered a case of the shanks. She closed with a quadruple-bogey when a par could have gotten her into a playoff with Birdie Kim.

The '06 Kraft Nabisco was the only other time Ochoa held the 54-hole lead at a major. Sunday, she improved to 7-6 all-time with the third-round lead, and 3-3 this season.

It was her 13th career win, her 10th in the last 16 months, her fourth this season.

And it was never in doubt.

The high winds that hounded players and sent scores soaring on Saturday had died down by Sunday morning -- it did rain, however -- and Mhairi McKay and Miki Saiki posted early 67s to prove there were good numbers to be had on the Old Course.

As it turned out, Ochoa didn't need one of them.

Several players made early runs at her lead while Ochoa opened with four consecutive pars, including Sorenstam, who made birdies at the third and sixth holes to pull within five shots.

Ochoa responded with back-to-back birdies from the fifth, shaking off any early jitters she may have had. The birdies put Ochoa at eight-under, giving her a seven-shot lead.

She gave a stroke back with a bogey at the eighth, and her lead was trimmed to five shots after Lee made a birdie ahead at the ninth.

But Ochoa made the turn with the same six-shot lead she held overnight after rolling in an 18-foot birdie putt at the ninth. When she lipped out a 10-foot par putt at the 11th, her advantage was five again.

Further bogeys at the 15th and 17th only served to trim her final margin of victory.

"I believed that I would win the tournament Monday when I first started practicing," Ochoa said, laughing. "But the 18th tee shot (Sunday) is when we did it.

"After we hit that tee shot and put it in the middle of the fairway ... I was walking with my caddie just saying that, you know, we did it and it was a great feeling."

And a long time coming.

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Huskers' Lucky hospitalized for undisclosed reason

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Nebraska running back Marlon Lucky was hospitalized Monday for undisclosed reasons after Lincoln police responded to a call at his residence.

The Nebraska athletic department said in a release Monday that Lucky was admitted Sunday night.

MySportsbook.com has the Cornhuskers listed at +2500 to win the BCS National Championship odds.

A nursing supervisor at the hospital said all questions about Lucky were being referred to the athletic department. The athletic department said there would be no further comment from the department or Lucky's family.

A Lincoln Police spokesman said officers responded to a call at Lucky's residence 11:30 p.m. Sunday. The spokesman said he didn't know Lucky's condition at the time he was taken to the hospital.

Lucky, from North Hollywood, Calif., started six games last season as a sophomore and was the team's second-leading rusher, with 728 yards and six touchdowns. He also caught 32 passes for 383 yards. He averaged 19.1 yards on eight kickoff returns.

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SPORTS BETTING: NFL Football Sportsbook Betting

NFL owners, already life's biggest winners, want to try their luck with the lottery.


That was the news out of their meetings last week, where team bosses voted unanimously to allow stamping state and local lottery tickets with franchise logos, if, ahem, any governments wanted to do a deal.

A shocker: Within days the Pats announced they'd be sponsoring the Massachusetts state lottery, the Skins said they'd slap their sticker on Virginia scratch-offs and the Ravens admitted they were talking to Maryland lottery bosses. In all likelihood, it won't be long before every team is a presenting sponsor of scratch-offs or just plain old pick fives. "The change in policy was approved 32-0," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "So you can expect to see more deals soon."

It's a branding opportunity too big for the owners to ignore, and one a couple of dozen baseball franchises have enjoyed for years. The fact the NFL has been slower to act than those slack-brained Seligites is indicative of its complicated relationship with all forms of gambling. Consider this: Last Thursday, as the Pats and the Redskins finalized their new lottery deals, a lawyer representing the NFL argued before Delaware's Supreme Court that the state's newly signed sports betting law should be repealed.

The NFL betting is the face of opposition to sports gambling . And as much as it would like to share that responsibility with other leagues, that's not going to happen as long as more than 40% of all money legally wagered on games is bet on football. That's why the Brewers can do a multi-million dollar deal with a local casino, or the Celtics can make their own pact with the Mass lottery, and the response is, "Sweet, let's play." But when the NFL does it the stakes are higher, and everyone from NPR's Frank Deford to the Associated Press to the guys blogging at Deadspin will line up to play gotcha.

So I asked Aiello, who surely knew there'd be piling on, how the league can rail against being bait for sports bettors, then allow its franchises to be just that for lotteries, the most insidious and addictive form of gambling around. He emailed me this response: "We are not moral crusaders. NFL personnel are permitted to engage in legal forms of gambling, except for betting on NFL games. We are making a distinction here between the spread of gambling on the outcome of our games and supporting state lottery scratch-off games, that have nothing to do with the outcome of our games."

Here's where I should rip him. But, the thing is, he's right. Not to get Obama on you, but this is a complicated, nuanced issue. As much as lotteries are considered a tax on the poor, the NFL isn't a socially obligated government program -- it's just a business. Scratch-off's help the bottom line, sports betting doesn't. Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors … But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal.

Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors. And it's okay to mutter something obscene when the league pretends gambling doesn't help drive TV ratings and fan interest and put money in owners' pockets. But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal. The Bears should put an orange "C" on every deck of cards dealt at Harrah's in Joliet; the Eagles should slap their logo on roulette wheels at the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Dolphins should hold training camp at the El San Juan in Puerto Rico.

Seriously.

The NFL's problem, when it comes to the gambling world, isn't hypocrisy, it's worse: The bosses lack vision. That's why the league is picking unwinnable fights in Delaware and taking pot shots from critics after making smart sponsorship deals. Roger Goodell and his gang are acting and thinking locally rather than globally, which is rare for them, especially compared to their professional (and amateur) counterparts.

The NBA held its All Star game in Las Vegas and David Stern's kingdom didn't crumble (although the town did bring plenty of players to their knees.) I'd say it's 6 to 5 and pick 'em that Lebron will make a road swing through Sin City before his career is over.

Even the NCAA College Football Betting is more progressive on this issue than the NFL. Several years ago Rachel Newman Baker, college sports' gambling czar, opened a dialogue with Vegas bookmakers to learn about how they do business. She's visited Nevada sports books, studied their operations and listened to how they regulate action. Now she knows she can expect a call from bookmakers, who lose money when sports are fixed, if they think something sketchy is going on in NCAA games. She's not in favor of sports betting, but, as she once told me, "I know it's not going away, either."

The NFL can't seem to accept that. And until it can find peace with the idea, it'll get flack, even when it's right.

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