Los Angeles
Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit steered a steady course to hold off charging Lydia Ko and win the ANA Inspiration on Sunday, making her first LPGA title a major championship.
Patty, 21, started the day with a five-shot lead and fired a four-under par 68 at Mission Hills in Rancho Mirage, California.
Her 18-under total of 270 put her two strokes in front of New Zealand’s former world number one Ko — who stormed from eight adrift with a sensational 10-under 62 for 272.
Four players shared third on 277: South Korean Kim Sei-young, American Nelly Korda, Denmark’s Nanna Koerstz Madsen and China’s Feng Shanshan.
“I had no idea,” Patty said of Ko’s spectacular round, which matched the tournament record established by Mexican great Lorena Ochoa in the first round in 2006.
“I just played my own game, didn’t look at the leaderboard at all … I just wanted to play my own game and I did — I did a really good job of that today.”
Patty, who played collegiate golf at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, padded her overnight cushion with a chip-in eagle at the par-five second and picked up another stroke at the eighth.—APP
