Hurst's herocis, Sorenstam's slip ups key playoff

	After 72 holes, including 36 on Sunday, Pat Hurst (left) and Annika Sorentam still have more walking to do. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

By E.M. Swift, SI.com

NEWPORT, R.I. -- Thirty-six holes wasn't enough. Thirteen hours of golf didn't get it done. With the light fading over the 18th green, and Newport Country Club's palatial clubhouse looming in the background, Annika Sorenstam's birdie putt slid over the edge and failed to drop. Moments later Pat Hurst, who'd made a clutch 30-yard chip from short of the green, put her four-foot knee knocker into the middle of the cup, and it was, "Nice playing, get some rest, let's do it again tomorrow."

On a brutally difficult course in the most trying of conditions, these two veterans shot even-par 284, two shots ahead of Stacy Prammanasudh, Michelle Wie, and Se Ri Pak. So it's back to windy Newport on Monday at 9 a.m. for the 35-year-old Sorenstam, who's seeking here first U.S. Open title in 10 years, and the 37-year-old Hurst, a mother of two who's looking for the second major championship of her career.

My bad for suggesting, as I did in this space Saturday, that the overweight Hurst would have trouble going 36-holes. She didn't. Turns out jogging and pilates have very little to do with the sort of guts and endurance required in golf. It was the resilient Hurst who reeled in the super-fit Sorenstam and shot 69 over her final 18 (after a 75 in the morning), which tied for the low round of the tournament.

Hurst's heroics -- she chipped in three times during the week, twice on the difficult 440-yard par 4 8th hole -- couldn't have happened without some help from the Swede. Every time it looked like Sorenstam had her first major in a year and 10th of her Hall of Fame career in the bag she committed a miscue that the Annika of old wouldn't have made. Her most egregious one came on the 7th hole when, holding a two-shot lead and having a perfect lie in the fairway, Sorenstam inexplicably tugged a nine-iron left of a sucker pin and into the water, leading to a double-bogey. She followed that up with bogeys on 8 and 9, so that with just nine holes to play Hurst, who went out in 33 shots, suddenly held a two-shot lead.

Sorenstam wants this U.S. Open title badly. She wants it to silence those who have said, with only one win this year, she's in a slump and perhaps the twilight of her great career. She wants it because she's won at least one major in each of the last five years, but is without one in 2006. She wants it because she's finished second in the Open twice in the past four years, and wants to put those ghosts to rest. And she wants it because she knows that, once Wie learns how to win, majors will be harder to come by for the rest of the women on tour.

But Wie doesn't yet know how to win -- she played well but made only one birdie over her last 28 holes -- and on the back side Sorenstam showed she still has what it takes. With a leaderboard that looked like a Who's Who of women's golf -- Sorenstam, Hurst, Juli Inkster, Wie, Pak, and the improbable Prammanasudh, who was sinking every putt she looked at -- it was Sorenstam who put on a finishing kick. She drained a 10-footer to birdie the par-5 10th, then made back-to-back birdies on 15 and 16. Suddenly Sorenstam was back in the lead, one-under for the tournament, a shot clear of Hurst and two up on the others.

If it had been '03 or '04, that would have been enough. In those years Sorenstam was as good as they came at closing the deal. But chinks are starting to show in her armor, and needing two pars to win the Open, she made bogey on the par-3 17th when her six-iron approach took a huge bounce off a downslope, and she was unable to get up and down from just over the green. Her birdie attempt at 18 was close, but you know what they say about close: only counts in grenades and horseshoes.

So it's a good meal, a good sleep, and back Monday to face the fescue and the wind. The U.S. Open still requires an 18-hole playoff to determine a champion, and if they're tied at the end of that, only then does it become sudden death. "This course is a true test," Sorenstam said, looking exhausted at the end of the day. "Every part of your game is tested. Your long game, your short game, your wind game, and your endurance."

"My adrenalin kept me going.," Hurst said, dismissing a question about whether she'd been tired coming down the homestretch of Sunday's marathon. "I was just thinking shot by shot. Not that this was my 33rd hole, my 34th hole. This is what we live for. This is what makes us come out."

One more round, ladies. Here's looking at you.

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