Dottie
Pepper felt hurried and unsettled at the start. Still, she figured things would
get better - and they did.
Pepper, grinding it out until her "A" game returned, birdied three of the last
five holes Saturday in a 2-under-par 70 that maintained her five-shot lead after
three rounds of the Oldsmobile Classic.
"I
think the whole thing started when I tried to do four loads of laundry this morning,"
said Pepper, who notched her second major LPGA title by winning the Nabisco Dinah
Shore earlier this season. "I should have done only two."
Karrie Webb, Kellie Kuehne, Rosie Jones, Donna Andrews and Beth Daniel were lumped
at 11-under 205 over the 6,191-yard layout at Walnut Hills Country Club. Kuehne
shot a 67, the others 69s in the third round.
"I
shot a number I was looking to shoot," said Kuehne, seeking her second win of
the season. "But Dottie is a great front-runner and she won't let up. I'll have
to shoot low Sunday."
Pepper started the day with a five-stroke lead over rookie Laura Philo. But Philo,
whose older brother, Ron Jr., dated Pepper in high school, looked uncomfortable
playing for the first time with her childhood golfing idol. Philo shot a 79 and
fell out of contention at 214.
"Dottie
still has five other people out there that are capable of passing her," said Jones,
who won the Firstar LPGA Classic in a playoff last week at Beavercreek, Ohio.
"She's probably not worried about that. She's a tough cookie to crack."
Pepper set a tournament
record and tied two by shooting a 9-under 63 in the second round for a 14-under
total of 130. But the magic she had in that round was missing when she teed it
up Saturday.
"The
wind blew, and I just felt rushed," Pepper said. "Fortunately, I found some semblance
of what I had yesterday while I was coming in."
The round began with Pepper driving into the right rough and leaving her approach
25 yards short of the green on the first hole. From there, she chunked a wedge
and needed two putts to get down for bogey.
With two bogeys and two birdies, Pepper turned at even-par 36. The back nine began
just as poorly as the front.
Pepper's tee shot went into the left rough, where she had a downhill, sidehill
lie with the ball below her feet. Her second shot went into some deep rough in
a swale right of the green. That led to another bogey and leaderboards around
the course showed her lead was slipping away as others begin to have double-digit
red numbers going up beside their names.
"I
don't read the boards closely, but you can see easily when double-digits come
up," Pepper said. "Even so, I was never too concerned because the crowds were
fairly quiet. That told me nobody was going crazy out there."
Pepper didn't go 4-0 in last year's Solheim Cup by accident. She kept grinding,
running off a string of pars, trying to find the touch.
It came on No. 14, a 440-yard, par-4.
Pepper slammed her driver down after hitting in the right rough, but pulled herself
together to knock her approach to within 6 feet. The ensuing birdie got her back
to 14 under and her body language said the confidence was coming back.
"I've been at this for
12 years," Pepper said. "You force yourself to be stubbornly patient."
Pepper hit a sand wedge
within 3 feet at No. 17 and made that to go 15 under. It proved to be an even
bigger swing when leaderboards showed Andrews, who once had closed within two
at 12 under, bogeyed the final hole.
Pepper stuck an 8-iron within 5 feet on 18 and there was never a doubt that she
would make the putt for the hard-earned 70 and restore the big lead she had four
hours earlier.
Divots:
The sun came out, the wind picked up, and suddenly Walnut Hills wasn't soft anymore.
Kuehne felt that might have made a difference in the third round. "The greens
are still a little soft from all the rain earlier in the week, but you can't fly
a 5-iron in and expect it to stop anymore," Kuehne said. ... Jones, who uses an
older model driver with a relatively small head by today's standards, frequently
hits it off the fairway. It helped her make eagle on par-5 sixth, a 460-yard hole.
Jones got the ball to stop 12 feet from the pin and rolled in the putt for a 3.
... Webb speculated that Pepper probably had no chance of matching her second-round
63 because she played in the final group Saturday. "Dottie went out early in the
second round, and the last group today. Sixty-eight people walked on the greens
before she ever got to them today," Webb said.
