The next challenge

HENDERSON, Nev. – For much of this decade, photos of Natalie Gulbis abounded on the Internet.

She was photographed posing seductively in a bikini. Or talking with a star NFL player. Or walking the red carpet at a movie premiere.

She was photographed everywhere, it seemed, except the one place Gulbis wanted most: the winner’s circle.

Then last July she rallied from four shots back in the final round to seize the Evian Masters outside Paris. She was a champion, at last, on the LPGA Tour.

This season, as Gulbis turned 25, the question becomes: Can she elevate her game to the next level? Can she challenge Lorena Ochoa, Annika Sorenstam, Suzann Pettersen, and Paula Creamer and be one of the tour’s elite players? Can she turn glamour into greatness?

This week’s Kraft Nabisco Championship in Palm Springs, Calif., the first major of the year for the LPGA, will be the first test. Gulbis embraces the challenge.

“If you’re not setting your goals high and striving for something very difficult to reach, then you’re not going to be truly successful,” she said. “What Lorena’s done is amazing. She’s an incredible player. But I feel like I still have a lot of room to go.”

She has taken many steps already, a golf wunderkind who, at 14, became the youngest player to Monday qualify for an LPGA tournament. A 12-year-old Michelle Wie broke the mark five years later.

Also at 14, Gulbis won the California Women’s Amateur and was the medalist in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at 15. Gulbis arrived on the Tour in 2002 after just a single year at the University of Arizona.

She expected to win right away. When she didn’t, she was surprised.

“I went out there,” she said, “and thought to myself, ‘Wow, I’m going to win one of these first couple.’ I just expected it.”

Gulbis did have a pair of fifth-place finishes that season, finishing second in the Rookie of the Year race and earning more than $250,000. But over the next two years, she compiled just two top-10s in 53 events.

Finally, in 2005, Gulbis broke through – sort of. In 27 appearances, she missed only one cut, recording 12 top-10s and pocketing more than $1 million, good enough for sixth on the money list.

Still, there were no victories. Let the Anna Kournikova comparisons begin.

Not that Gulbis cared.

“Oh, it would bother you if you let it,” Gulbis said on a glorious early spring day at Reflection Bay Golf Club, a drive and a 5-iron from her home in this upscale Las Vegas suburb. “But me? I wouldn’t let it bother me. I’m a competitor. Of course I want to win, especially majors. But I wasn’t going to let what anyone else thought shape what I thought about myself.”

To be sure, her play in recent years has been impressive. She has often been in contention. And consistency is a key to success.

“I don’t think people really understand how difficult it is to play good, consistent golf week after week and then year after year,” LPGA Hall of Famer Amy Alcott. said. “That kind of consistency is so difficult, which is what makes what Tiger and Annika have done so remarkable. They’re in a sport you can’t dominate, and the fact that they have is remarkable.

“Natalie has played remarkably consistent golf for a while. That’s the sign of a very good player.”

And has been a real factor in major championships since 2004, notching four top-10s, including a third-place finish at the Kraft Nabisco in 2006.

There is no mystery to her performance in the big events. She knows how to prepare for them.

She is coached by noted instructor Butch Harmon and spends much of her time hanging out on the range at Harmon’s school at Rio Secco in Henderson. Gulbis used to talk with Tiger Woods when he was working with Harmon and now she eagerly picks the brains of Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott.

“All of them, all of Butch’s guys, build everything they do around the majors,” Gulbis said. “The majors are the kinds of tournaments I love, too. I love it where you have to grind and where par is a good score and where you have to be patient and not get greedy. The tournaments that mean the most are the ones that just really get me going.”

Still, does she possess the pure ability to become an elite player?

“I would have to say the jury is still out on that,” golf analyst Judy Rankin said. “She has a lot of game and she is a good player. Is she in the league to be one of the top five in the world? Wow. I wouldn’t say yes, but I can’t say no.

“She’s a very hard worker, which people who are just out buying her calendars might not guess. I’ve seen her under pressure and she has the nerves to play at that top level. She hits very good shots under pressure.”

Rankin applauds Gulbis’ length and ball flight, but she says Gulbis needs to improve her short game – including her putting.

“All in all, I’d say she needs to knock on the door more often,” Rankin said. “She knocks on the door real often to finish well, but if she wants to reach that elite level where only the very good players are, she’ll have to knock on the door of winning more often.”

If and when Gulbis does, her game could garner her as much attention as her looks.

“My goal, without question, is to be No. 1,” Gulbis said. “Who doesn’t want to be considered the best player in the world? I’m this close now, so I’m not going to quit trying to make those final steps.”