Associated Press
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. ó Her heart racing and her hands shaking, Brittany Lincicome did whatever she could to kept it together on the final holes of the Kraft Nabisco Championship.
She breathed deep. She and her caddie sang country songs, mostly Sugarland and Kenny Chesney.
It worked, because she hit two brilliant shots on 18 to set up a 4-foot eagle putt that she rolled in to win her first major on Sunday.
“I can’t even describe it,” Lincicome said moments after taking the traditional plunge into the lake that surrounds the 18th green. “It’s surreal, really.”
Never worse than three strokes behind in the final round, Lincicome stayed close as her good friend Kristy McPherson and Cristie Kerr traded the lead back and forth on a perfect day at Mission Hills.
Trailing McPherson by one stroke, the 23-year-old Lincicome broke through with an amazing sequence of shots on the par-5, 485-yard 18th.
McPherson calls Lincicome “Bam-Bam” because of the length of her drives, and Lincicome lived up to that by booming a 275-yard drive down the middle of the fairway.
“It just came down to 18, and luckily my length is a strong point and I bombed it out there and went for the green,” Lincicome said.