KAPOLEI — History had to catch Stacy Prammanasudh in the final round of the Fields Open in Hawai'i yesterday. She wasn't having any.

Prammanasudh parlayed all the worldliness of her 27 years and the brilliance of a bullet-proof golf game into a one-shot victory over Jee Young Lee at Ko Olina Golf Club. The Tulsa All-American earned $180,000 for her second LPGA victory, going wire-to-wire in a rain-delayed event just as she had two years ago in Tennessee.

This time she knew what hit her, and it felt great.

"The first (win) kind of came upon me by surprise," said Prammanasudh, who won in her second season. "I wasn't expecting to win so early and then you put in a lot of hard work to try to get that second one."

Prammanasudh had golf's future nipping at her golf cleats all week. She and Angela Park, an 18-year-old making her second LPGA start, led after the first two rounds. Park finished off the last half of a second-round 68 early yesterday to share the lead at 10-under.

The cut was made at even par, with 70 moving on almost immediately to the final round. That included former Rainbow Wahine Cindy Rarick, whose first swing in the early morning launched a hole-in-one on the 12th to help her make the cut by one.

Park would have become the youngest winner of an LPGA multi-round event had she won yesterday. Same with Morgan Pressel, another precocious 18-year-old who had top-five finishes in both Hawai'i LPGA events to start the season.

But their niche in history is collecting dust because Prammanasudh refused to back off. She hit her first approach shot to 5 feet yesterday and her second to 8, drained both birdies and forced the field to catch her. No one could.

She fired a nearly flawless 4-under-par 68 into Ko Olina's gusty wind and finished at 14-under 202, with nine of her birdies coming on the par-5s. One by one every challenger came up short, with Lee, a 21-year-old human golf-ball launcher, the last to run out of holes.

"Everything worked out, shots were great," Lee said through a translator. "But there were just not enough birdies."

She matched Prammanasudh's birdie at the second with a 24-footer that snaked in. Both two-putted the par-5 fifth (489 yards) and 13th (497) for birdie. Prammanasudh converted from 6 feet on the 11th and Lee dropped in another long one at the 12th.

The only front-nine bogey for the final group belonged to Prammanasudh, when she missed the green on the third hole — one of just three missed greens all day. Her game, tweaked by the first five lessons of her life from someone other than her mechanic father this offseason, never faltered.

Lee figured she had time to catch up, even as she sweated out a 7:30 p.m. deadline for her flight home, a time that looked good before Friday's rain delay sent the second round spilling into Saturday morning. Ultimately, Prammanasudh never gave her or anyone else a chance, playing with a poise few match under final-round pressure.

"I mean, 18 holes is a lot of time out there," Prammanasudh admitted. "It's four or five hours of concentration that you have got to keep yourself together. With the way the talent is on our tour you can't really let your mind slack at all. I was really focused on just being really in the moment, focusing on each one of my targets and keeping my mind focused on what I needed to do."

Easy to say, not so easy to do, as Pressel put it Friday after her 65 left her two shots back. She would get no closer, to Prammanasudh or her first LPGA victory, with a final-round 69. She did take a step forward from last week's fourth-place finish, finishing in a tie for third with Park (71) and Japan's Ai Miyazato.

Park was imperturbable under immense pressure in her second LPGA start, but could do no better than 71. Miyazato charged in with a 66 to tie her best previous LPGA finish and then wondered, out loud, if this really was an LPGA event.

"There were so many Japanese people today it seemed like I was on the Japanese tour," she said with a shrug.

Cristie Kerr and Paula Creamer, the top Americans at Nos. 4 and 5 in the Rolex World Rankings, streaked into the top 10 with hot final rounds that were simply too little, too late.

Creamer's 67 pulled her into 10th and gave last week's SBS Open at Turtle Bay champion $187,000 on her two-week Hawai'i "vacation." Kerr tied the week's best round with a 65 to pull into sixth and soothe her soul somewhat from the first-round judgment lapse that led to two penalty strokes on the 12th green.

Amazingly, the same situation came up again yesterday on the fifth hole, when her ball stopped on top of a ridge on the green and was in danger of rolling away before she could putt. This time, Kerr called for a rules official, got relief and drained an eagle putt.

"I took away how big my heart is and how much I fought out there for everything," Kerr said. "I just really appreciate everybody supporting me on it. It was a tough deal and you learn from everything."

What she learned most, after grounding her putter behind a ball that rolled away on its own Thursday, was the value of knowing the rules. "Even if you think you know the rules," Kerr said, "you can never be too good at them."

That all left Lee with the only shot at Prammanasudh and the second-year member — who earned her card by winning the LPGA's 2005 CJ Nine Bridges Classic in South Korea — was good to the final putt. Just not quite good enough. Lee lipped out a birdie putt on the third hole and missed a 12-footer on the 356-yard 17th after hitting her drive "too far" and leaving herself an awkward 55 yards.

She leaves Hawai'i with few regrets. Lee was fourth in driving distance last year at 275 yards and leads the tour this year after blasting it 314 yards on the two measured holes yesterday. But what she was most happy about was the confidence boost this gave her and her improved accuracy — she hit 60 percent of the fairways last year, but nearly 80 percent this week.

Prammanasudh's one chance to break away got away on the 15th, when she missed a 7-footer for birdie and Lee knocked in a comebacker from 4 feet for par. The gap remained at one, as it was for all but three holes in the final round for the players ranked 23rd (Lee) and 30th in the world.

It was enough for Prammanasudh, whose new "more compact" swing held up in the heat of one of her greatest moments. She will be back for another lesson tomorrow with her instructor, Bill Harmon, whose "totally simple" style suits her no-frills/no-fault game.

But first, she was planning a small celebration on her red-eye flight. "Might need to upgrade," Prammanasudh said with a grin.

NOTES

When the cut finally came yesterday, 70 players advanced to the afternoon's final round at even-par 144. Hilo amateur Kimberly Kim, 15, missed it by three as did Sakura Yokomine. Turtle Bay's Dorothy Delasin shot 78—149 and defending champion Meena Lee 75—146. Julieta Granada, who was fourth here last year and second last week, missed it by one. Qualifiers Kris Tamulis and Lisa Fernandes also failed to make it.

Lorena Ochoa's T45 finish (74—215) was her worst since she missed a cut in September of 2005.

Reach Ann Miller at amiller@honoluluadvertiser.com.