RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – Nobody experienced the range of emotions Annie Park felt in Thursday’s first round of the ANA Inspiration.
She awakened excited to play the year’s first major, only to discover the back window of her car was smashed and her golf clubs were stolen from the parking lot of her Palm Desert hotel.
A few hours later, she was inexplicably charging up the leaderboard, with an unfamiliar mish-mash set of clubs frantically pieced together, a set that included her caddie’s irons with “super stiff” shafts, a hodgepodge of new wedges, a hybrid and a putter that she bought go the Mission Hills pro shop.