Lorena Ochoa - Childhood and Amateur Career

Childhood and Amateur Career

Born and raised in Guadalajara, Ochoa was the third of four children of a real estate developer and an artist. She took up golf at the age of five, won her first state event at the age of six, and her first national event at seven.

An 11-year-old Ochoa approached the professional Rafael Alarcon, 1979 winner of the Canadian Amateur Championship, as he worked on his game at Guadalajara Country Club, where her family lived near the 10th tee. She asked him if he would help her with her game. Alarcon asked her what her goal was, "She said she wanted to be the best player in the world."

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 U.S. on a golf scholarship, where she was a teammate of fellow freshman Natalie Gulbis. While a student in Tucson, Ochoa received regular tutoring and greatly improved her English by watching movies and reading magazines between practice and tournaments.

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 in both 2001 and 2002. The Cup is given to the player who has the best scoring average versus par with at least 20 full rounds played during a season. 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 person and first golfer to receive Mexico's highest sporting accolade. 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.

Nancy Lopez describes Ochoa off the golf course as:

"When you meet her for the second time and she remembers not only your name, but also the slightest detail from the last time you spoke."