Ailing Creamer eyes LPGA money title

Published 2:52 pm Saturday, November 22, 2008

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Paula Creamer will use a pink ball Sunday, her custom for the final round. Odds are, she’ll play those 18 holes with a different color in mind: green.

Lots and lots of green, provided she can coax 18 more holes from her ailing body.

Creamer will have a chance to be the first American to win the LPGA Tour’s season money crown in 15 years Sunday, when she’s one of eight remaining competitors at the ADT Championship at Trump International. All will start tied at par when they embark on an 18-hole shootout for the $1 million winner’s prize.

“Money title or not, I want to win this event,” Creamer said.

Earlier this week, she wasn’t even sure she’d play this event.

She began experiencing sharp stomach pains Wednesday night and they haven’t subsided much since. Creamer cut her usual 90-minute warmup to a half-hour to conserve energy, hasn’t been able to eat solid food for three days except for nibbling on dry toast and bagels during her round Saturday.

At times during the third round, Creamer would hit a shot, then double over in pain for seconds.

“The best position for me is hunched over,” Creamer said. “I’m not a big complainer, but one more day — that’s what I keep telling myself.”

If Creamer wins the season-ending event that’ll probably be best remembered as Annika Sorenstam’s presumed finale on the LPGA Tour, not only will she nudge Lorena Ochoa by $41,457 for the title, she’ll become the first U.S.-born money champion since Betsy King in 1993.

Ochoa earned $8,000 this week, but didn’t qualify for the weekend rounds. A victory would push Creamer just over $2.8 million for 2008; King won $595,992 when she took the cash crown.

Creamer said she would see doctors Saturday night, but promised to be on the tee Sunday morning.

“If I was going to withdraw, it would have been earlier,” Creamer said.

Suzann Pettersen put together the best round Saturday with a 4-under 68, shaking off a triple-bogey at the par-4 fourth with almost flawless golf the rest of the way. Pettersen got back to even by the seventh, then ensured her spot in Sunday’s field with four straight birdies on holes 13-16.

Considering she made two birdies in the first two rounds combined, an eight-birdie Saturday surely did oodles for her confidence.

“I still think the best golf for me this week is ahead of me,” said Pettersen, who has three second-place finishes in 2008 but no wins, after claiming five titles a year ago.

Angela Stanford shot 69, one shot back of Pettersen, to earn her spot in Sunday’s dash for the cash, which was displayed in a clear plastic box, with 10,000 bills — all $100s — neatly bundled. Creamer and Seon Hwa Lee shot 70, and Ji-Yai Shin and Jeong Jang were another shot back.

A three-way playoff decided the final two spots: Karrie Webb and Eun-Hee Jee advanced when Sun Young Yoo three-putted the par-3 17th.

Webb and Creamer are the only players to reach all three final rounds of the ADT since it adopted the eight-player, erase-the-previous-scores Sunday format in 2006. Neither has finished better than third.

If course knowledge counts for anything, it’ll help Webb. She’s a regular at Trump International, albeit under far different conditions.

“It’s almost, sometimes, I think a disadvantage that I play here so much, because it doesn’t play the way it does when I play it the other 99 percent of the time,” Webb said.

Katherine Hull, the leader after the first and second rounds, started with four bogeys in her first six holes Saturday. If this was a normal week, she’d have been tied for fifth at that point, but instead was quickly dropping well out of contention to even play Sunday.

Hull chipped in for birdie at the par-3 11th, but wound up shooting 79 after going 4 over on her final three holes.

Stiff winds made a tough course even harder. Karen Stupples putted four times for triple-bogey at the par-4 16th, then tossed her ball into the water out of frustration on her way to a 77. In-Kyung Kim shot 80, and Helen Alfredsson made triple-bogey at 18 to shoot 74, which meant par at the finishing hole would have sent her to Sunday.

They’d all gladly trade places with Creamer, her abdominal distress notwithstanding. She was planning to have tests to rule out appendicitis, and was optimistic of simply keeping down some food and getting a bit of rest. The lure of a $1 million payday and a money title might prove the best medicine.

“All I know is I’m definitely not feeling my best,” Creamer said. “But we’ll try to tough it out.”