Lorena Ochoa (born in Guadalajara, Jalisco on 15
November 1981) is a Mexican golfer who plays on the
U.S.-based LPGA Tour and is currently the number one
ranked woman golfer in the world. She is considered
one of the best Mexican golfers of all time, as she
is the first Mexican golfer of either gender to be
ranked number one in the world.
Ochoa grew up next door to the Guadalajara Country
Club and took up golf at the age of five. She won
her first state event at the age of six and her
first national event at seven. All told as a junior
she captured 22 state events in Guadalajara and 44
national events in Mexico. She won five consecutive
titles at the Junior World Golf Championships and in
2000 she enrolled at the University of Arizona in
the United States.
She was very successful in women's collegiate golf
in the next two years, winning the NCAA Player of
the Year Awards for 2001 and 2002, finishing
runner-up at both the 2001 and 2002 NCAA National
Championship and being named to the National Golf
Coaches Association (NGCA) 2001 All-America First
team. She won the 2001 Pac-10 Women's Golf
Championships, was named PAC-10 Freshman/Newcomer of
the Year 2001 and was All Pac-10 First team in 2001
and 2002.
In her sophomore year she had eight tournament wins
in ten events she entered and set an NCAA record
with seven consecutive victories in her first seven
events. She won the Golfstat Cup, which is given to
the player who has the best scoring average versus
par with at least 20 full rounds played during a
season in both 2001 and 2002, setting the
single-season NCAA scoring average record as a
freshman at 71.33 and beating her own record the
next year by just over a stroke per round with a
70.13 average.
In November 2001, Ochoa was presented with Mexico's
National Sports Award by Mexican President Vicente
Fox. She was the youngest recipient of her country's
highest sporting accolade, and the first golfer to
receive it. In 2006 she was named NCAA Division I
Women’s Golf Most Outstanding Student Athlete, an
award which was bestowed as part of the 25th
Anniversary of Women’s Championships celebration,
taking into account outstanding performances over
the past 25 years. She was the recipient of the 2003
Nancy Lopez Award which is presented annually to the
world's most outstanding female amateur golfer.
Ochoa left university after her sophomore year to
turn professional. She won three of her ten events
on the 2002 Futures Tour, and topped the money list
to earn membership on the LPGA Tour for the
following season. She was also Duramed FUTURES Tour
Player of the Year.
In her rookie season she gained eight top-10
finishes including two runner up finishes at the
Wegmans Rochester and Michelob Light Open at
Kingsmill ending the season as the Louise Suggs
Rolex Rookie of the Year award and ninth on the
money list. In 2004 she won her first two LPGA Tour
titles, the Franklin American Mortgage Championship
(where she became the first Mexican born player to
win on the LPGA Tour) and the Wachovia LPGA Classic.
That same year she placed in the top ten in three of
the four majors.
In 2005, she won the Wegman's Rochester LPGA. In
2006, her first round score of 62 in the Kraft
Nabisco Championship tied the record for lowest
score ever by a golfer, male or female, in any major
tournament. Her playoff loss to Karrie Webb marked
her best finish until 2007 in an LPGA major. By the
end of the year she won six tournaments, topped the
moneylist and claimed her first LPGA Tour Player of
the Year award which goes to the player who gains
the most number of points throughout the season
based on a formula in which points are awarded for
top-10 finishes and are doubled at the LPGA's four
major championships and at the season-ending ADT
Championship. She also won the LPGA Vare Trophy for
lowest scoring average on the LPGA Tour.
Her achievements were recognized outside the sport
of golf when Ochoa won the 2006 Associated Press
Female Athlete of the Year award and received the
National Sports Prize for the second time.
In April 2007, Ochoa overtook Annika Sörenstam to
become World number one ranked golfer.
In August 2007, Ochoa won her first major
championship at the historic home of golf, the Old
Course at St. Andrews, with a wire-to-wire win by
four shots at the Women's British Open. She won the
next two LPGA events, the CN Canadian Women's Open
and the Safeway Classic, the first to win three
consecutive events since Annika Sörenstam in 2005.
Also in 2007, Ochoa became the first woman ever to
earn more than $4,000,000 in a single season,
surpasing Annika Sörenstam's previous record of
$2,863,904.
