Queen of gales King goes for Burton

There have been, in the long history of such things, better birthday presents than five hours spent fighting the wind and rain at Royal Lytham St Annes. But Betsy King, 43 yesterday, would not swap it, for in the worst of yesterday's weather, as drenching drizzle swept over the Lancastrian coast, she produced a round of 71, one under par, to share the lead in the Women's British Open with her American compatriot Brandie Burton.

King and Burton, who at least remained dry, were one ahead of the leading British challenger Trish Johnson, with Scotland's Dale Reid and the Indian Smriti Mehra a further stroke behind.

But the day was dominated by the course and the weather. Lytham's par was reckoned by the former US Women's Open champion Alison Nicholas to be 76 rather than the official 72, and of the first 108 contestants only 14 broke 40 for the back nine, which has a par of 37.

Not even the power of Laura Davies could prevail. She took 79, as did Lotta Neumann, Marie-Laure de Lorenzi and Lisa Hackney. Karrie Webb needed 76 and Annika Sorenstam, two under after 12, finished on 75, three over.

Se Ri Pak, as befits a winner of two major championships this season, took with her one of the largest, and certainly one of the most cosmopolitan, galleries of the day. Four Korean television companies recorded her every move and if the viewers back home learned one thing it was how not to play in a wind; 78 should not have been her score.

Pak's thinking had failed to cross the Atlantic with her; she was forever wanting to take the club for the yardage, not the club for the yardage and the wind, to the despair of her experienced caddie Andy Prodger. He has trudged round Lytham with the likes of Nick Faldo and knows the effect seaside winds can have.

"After a while," he said later, "I started telling her one more club than I really wanted her to take. If the shot was a seven-iron I knew she would be thinking eight, so I said six. That way we got the seven."

Eventually Pak began to get the drift, so that when Prodger, at the 17th, said she needed a two-iron for her second, resistance was only brief. "One and hundred and seventy eight yards," she said. "No need two-iron." But she did. She took it, finished on the green and all but holed the putt.

"She will win this one day, when she learns to play in a wind," said Prodger.

An unlikely lover of the wind turned out to be Mehra. Although only 5ft 6in she believes that only Davies is longer in the world of women's golf and when asked about the conditions she said: "Let it blow harder. I love it. The longer the course, the better. It means it's not just a putting competition. On the US Tour it is all putting, not shotmaking. Over there I'm hitting a sand-wedge into most par fours."

Last year in the United States she averaged 263 yards off the tee and attributes this ability to having been brought up on the Royal Calcutta course which, at 6,500 yards for women, is some 200 yards longer than Lytham this week.

She also has the priceless asset of having learned the game early. She hated school at Loreto House - "run by Irish nuns who wouldn't let us look to the right or to the left" - but she loved golf.

"For a whole year I used to get on the school bus, get off at the crossroads, change out of uniform and go and play golf," she said. "When my report came it said `Attendance, three per cent'. I told my mother it was a mistake and should have said 93 per cent."