Bernard Brault
Ai Miyazato is Mighty Mouse in Japan, so famous, they say, she has to wear a disguise in public.
For good reason. The 25-year-old golfer from Okinawa, Japan, reclaimed the No. 1 spot in the world rankings last week after winning her fifth LPGA Tour event, the Safeway Classic in Beaverton, Ore. She's back this week to try to add another, the CN Canadian Women's Open in Winnipeg. If she triumphs, she will have won LPGA events in Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Singapore and the United States.
Miyazato is tiny and animated, and so confident. She's brimming with it, her brown eyes bright. She hasn't played in Winnipeg before and in the past day or so, she's learned a lot about the city's weather: steamy hot one day, frigid and windy the next.
"It seems like it's a windy place," Miyazato said Wednesday. "Maybe it's going to play really tough. If it's not windy, I think some players can shoot really low scores."
Top Canadian player Alena Sharp said it was windier on Tuesday at St. Charles Country Club than it was at the Ricoh Women's British Open. Although the forecast calls for warmer weather (and perhaps less wind), Sharp said it's wise to be ready for anything.
Miyazato looks as if she's ready for anything. It was exciting, she said, last week to win her fifth tour event of the year. She still can't believe it.
"Earlier last week, I got really good feelings," she said. Her putting was sound. Her confidence was high. Still, her own minefield is to become a victim of expectations now, but she has strategies to deal with that.
"If it's high expectations coming up, it's really tough to keep control of myself," she said. "So I just stayed calm, and tried to be myself, and it happened."
She refused to watch other golfers last week. She chatted with her caddy, and kept her eyes off the greens when others were playing, trying to stay in the moment and not get ahead of herself.
She's been asked 100 times, she said, about what it means to her to be No. 1. She started the year ranked No. 8, but she's been to No. 1 and back since. On June 21, she became No. 1 for the first time, but held it for just a week. Then Cristie Kerr took it away from her and held it for three weeks. Miyazato regained No. 1 on July 19, lost it again to Kerr, then won it back last Sunday.
It was Kerr she outshot at the Safeway Classic.
"The rankings have been changing every week," Kerr said Wednesday. "There's four or five people who can challenge with a win every week."
Kerr, who won the Canadian Women's Open in 2006 in London, Ont., said she plans to "leave nothing in the tank" this year and she's going after that No. 1 ranking again.
As for Miyazato, the highest ranking motivates her, but her biggest goal is to be player of the year.
She's found her way to the top this season by staying true to her style. She's not a power hitter, but during the off-season she worked hard on her short game. "It makes my game, and that's why I think I'm playing so good so far," she said. "But I want to keep it going."
She's developed a novel way of practising her drive, too, standing on small, coloured balls, one under each foot, as she takes a swing.
She said it takes the tension out of her swing, helps her relax and builds her core strength, too, as she fights to balance herself over the balls while taking a swing. She sometimes stands on one ball, with the other foot off the ground while she swings.
"My swing is really low tempo and I need to be like really less tension with my swing," she said.
Miyazato does fall off the balls sometimes, she said. But the exercise is important in giving her a good sense of a low centre of gravity, she said.
Miyazato wasn't so confident when she joined the LPGA Tour in 2006. She'd been brilliant as a young player, winning one professional tournament in Japan as an amateur and then another 13 in her homeland as a pro through 2006, but it took her three years to win her first LPGA event last season. She was young when she came to the United States and could speak no English.
But now she's found her stride. Her English is excellent, although she occasionally still defers to a Japanese translator.
And now that she plays a lot outside her own country, she can look back to her homeland in a different way. She's embracing her fame. She may be just 5 foot 2, but she's mighty and she's definitely No. 1. For now.