Janice Moodie lost her taste for Big Macs yesterday. In the first round of her first major, the $1.3m McDonald's LPGA Champion-ship at Wilmington in Delaware, the Scot was given a two-shot penalty for slow play.
It turned a more than respectable 73 into a four-over-par 75, and left her in a state of shock. ''I can't believe it,'' said the Windyhill 24-year-old who, until then, also could hardly believe her good fortune at having been called into the event on Wednesday as the first reserve.
It was after making her first birdie of the day, from 10 feet at the long ninth, that he was collared by an official and informed: ''Two shots for slow play.''
Her rueful smile as she told her caddie, fellow-Scot Mike Paterson, en route to the tenth tee, indicated her surprise, and it was little wonder that her drive was a wild hook.
But it says much for the player, who currently heads the rookie-of-the-year standings, that she salvaged a par and made birdie from eight feet at the long eleventh. She did drop a couple of shots at 13 and 15, but a 75 was still no disgrace on a day when the wet course made scoring very tough.
''I didn't have a clue that we were being watched. But tomorrow I'll just go out and try to shoot as low as possible,'' she said.
Official Doug Brecht, who had given the penalty, explained: ''Moodie played four shots at the ninth and so her allowed time over the ball was 120 seconds plus 25 seconds grace. But she was way over at 196 seconds.
''The group had also fallen 16 minutes behind. I started watching them at the seventh and then monitored all the players down the ninth. We don't need to give any warnings.''
In the European equivalent, the McDonald's WPGA Champion-ship at Gleneagles two years ago, Moodie, then an amateur, was disqualified after making a mistake in a ruling over a lost ball.
While Korean Se Ri Pak, who is second behind Moodie in the rookie-of-the-year rankings, took a one-shot lead with Lisa Walter after a tournament record 65, the two other Scots, Kathryn Marshall and Catriona Matthew, both posted 74. Marshall bogeyed the last, after having made birdies at the sixteenth and seventeenth. Scores:
65 - S R Pak (Korea), L Walter.
68 - H Daly-Donofrio, M McGann.
69 - N Harvey.
70 - A DeLuca, P Hammel, B Mucha, M Redman.
71 - A Fruhwirth, C Koch (Sweden).
73 - T Johnson (England).
74 - M Spencer-Devlin, K Marshall (Scotland), C Matthew (Scotland).
75 - J Moodie (Scotland).
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