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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA | The brutal, gut-wrenching legend of Olympic Club continues. No lead is ever safe. That’s the history of the place. Students of the game know the stories. Ben Hogan led by a shot going into the final round in 1955 and ended up losing in a playoff to a municipal course pro from Iowa named Jack Fleck. Arnold Palmer led by seven with nine holes to play in the 1966 U.S. Open at Olympic. He lost to Billy Casper after making a mess of the par-5 16th. Palmer never won another major.
Tom Watson was supposed to beat Scott Simpson. That didn’t happen. Lee Janzen was in the clubhouse when he won. That one was Payne Stewart’s to lose, which he did. And Webb Simpson was also sitting inside with his wife when Jim Furyk spit the bit on Olympic’s back nine on Sunday.
This past Sunday, the first U.S. Women’s Open held at the famed Lake Course joined the list. With a penetrating ball flight, remarkable power and the strength to muscle shots through the thick rough that every player found at various times at Olympic Club, Lexi Thompson needed only a mediocre short game to contend. The fact that she entered the final round 11th in the field in putting put her in the perfect spot to capture her second major championship and her first U.S. Women’s Open in her 15th start.
Instead, the 26-year-old from Florida failed to even reach the playoff that produced Yuka Saso as champion.
On Sunday’s first hole, Thompson reached the par-5 with a 6-iron, leaving herself an uphill eagle putt that slipped by on the high side. She tapped in for birdie, made another birdie at the fifth, and just like that, Thompson held a five-shot lead through eight holes.
That’s when a sense of anxiety set in. Thompson missed a few fairways but held it together with some powerful approaches. But the feeling of dread and history could not be ignored. Thompson missed the fairway on 11, gouged out an approach short, and then flubbed a pitch shot – a semi-chunk, flip-scoop that didn’t make it onto the green. From there, she chipped to 5 feet and didn’t sniff the hole with the bogey putt.
She missed the 12th fairway wide right and missed the green long but got up and down for par with a brilliant chip. Another missed fairway and a putting stroke that looked like she’d been hit with a cattle prod led to a bogey on 14.
The lead was down to two.
An excruciating 15 minutes later, Nasa Hataoka made a solid 12-footer for birdie at 16, her sixth birdie of the day.
The lead was one.
Thompson missed a relatively short birdie effort on 16 and missed the fairway left at 17. Hataoka made a wonderful par at 17, while Philippines star Saso, who started the day one shot back and seemingly fell away with back-to-back double bogeys at Nos. 2 and 3, birdied both 16 and 17. That left Thompson with a 5-footer for par on 17 to retain a one-shot lead with one to go. Again, the confident putting stroke that made an appearance early in the week caught an early flight home.
Thompson didn’t hit the hole with that attempt, or with her par try that came up short on 18.
A final-round 75 and this could well be the most devastating loss in a long history of Lexi Thompson train wrecks. Once again, it came from a putter that can’t be sugar-coated. We’re talking Doug-Sanders-at-St.-Andrews kind of bad.
There was the missed 2-footer at the CME Group Tour Championship that would have locked up the million-dollar bonus, Rolex Player of the Year honors, and the No. 1 spot in the world. And there was the huge disappointment at the 2017 ANA Inspiration when she was assessed a four-shot penalty and lost in a playoff to So Yeon Ryu. Coming down the stretch at Olympic, Thompson couldn’t get makeable putts to stay within tap-in range. The birdie putt at 16, a right-to-left breaker from the easiest spot on the green, ran by a solid 3 feet. The par putt at 17 slid a foot low. And the one at 18 to join the playoff wound up 8 inches short.
This was supposed to be the week Thompson made a turn. From the moment she arrived in San Francisco, she looked like a different person, joyful and content, like the weight of expectations, of unfulfilled potential, had been lifted. She said as much on Saturday after posting the round of the week, a bogey-free 66 to take a one-shot lead into the final round.
“Honestly, I’ve been working with John Denney,” she said. “I worked with him in 2016 and 2017 and now I’m working with him again. But, honestly, I mean, I’ve – haven't really struggled but haven’t played to my standards and what I need. I just realized that I needed to change my mindset. It was only hurting me.
“Obviously, I needed to work on some technical things in my game and everything. But the mental side, I think, was really getting to me. I was just taking it way too seriously and thinking that Lexi depended on my score. So, it’s really hard for me to not think that, but I just got into a state where I recognize that I’m going to hit bad shots, and it is what it is. I can manage to get up and down or do what I can.”
"Of course it’s hard to smile, but it was an amazing week. Yeah, I played not so good today with a few of the bogeys coming in on the back nine. But the fans were unbelievable, hearing the chants just gives me a reason to play."
Lexi Thompson
Denney is a practitioner of something called the Harmony Exercise, which he learned in California from an astrologer and spiritual advisor named Carroll Righter, who died in 1988 but not before advising former First Lady Nancy Reagan. On its website, the Harmony Exercise is described as “a 10-minute meditation.” But from what Thompson describes, Denney’s contribution involves a great deal more than 10-count breathing exercises.
“It takes a lot of hard work,” Thompson said. “I’ve been calling John Denney a few times a week and just really focusing on the good in my life, just the blessings. Just to be out here is a blessing, honestly. Just everything good and, then all the fans, I’m just embracing all of that.
“It’s a lot about gratitude with John, very spiritual, just gratitude, being grateful for everything in my life and being grateful that I have the opportunity to be able to play a golf course like this or any golf course, in general, honestly.
“I mean, whether I play good or bad it’s still an amazing experience.”
After finishing bogey-bogey on Sunday to miss the U.S. Women’s Open playoff by a shot, Thompson signed every autograph.
Then she said, “Of course it’s hard to smile, but it was an amazing week. Yeah, I played not so good today with a few of the bogeys coming in on the back nine. But the fans were unbelievable, hearing the chants just gives me a reason to play.
“It was an unbelievable feeling to be out here and play this golf course. I’ll take today and I’ll learn from it. And have a lot more weeks ahead, a lot more years.”
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