Friday, August 8, 2008

AXA Ladies Friday: Ji-Woo Lee Leads Ueda by 1 (and Gulbis by 5)

Momoko Ueda greeted the JLPGA's finest with a bogey-free 68 at the AXA Ladies, but she trails Ji-Woo Lee by 1, is tied with Akiko Fukushima, Shiho Oyama, and Hyun-Ju Shin, and leads Na Zhang and Shinobu Moromizato only by 1.

Here's the complete top 10 after the 1st round's action is complete:

1st/-5 Lee (67)
T2/-4 Fukushima, Oyama, Shin, Ueda, Mie Nakata, Yuka Shiroto, Momoyo Kawakubo (68)
T9/-3 Zhang, Moromizato, Michiko Hattori, Kurumi Dohi, Chiharu Yamaguchi (69)

Lee and Ueda owned the only bogey-free rounds in the bunch, while Hattori eagled the 502-yard par-5 1st hole and Oyama and Kawakubo made the most birdies in the field (6).

Right on their heels are a host of other JLPGA notables and 1 other player you may have heard of:

T14/-2 Ayako Uehara, Hiroko Yamaguchi (70)
T20/-1 Miho Koga, Yuko Mitsuka, Hiromi Mogi, Erina Hara, Midori Yoneyama, Maiko Wakabayashi (71)
T31/E Natalie Gulbis, Ritsuko Ryu, Mayu Hattori (72)

Yes, that Gulbis!

The rest will be struggling to make the cut:

T53/+2 Akane Iijima, Yun-Jye Wei (74)
T68/+3 Yukari Baba, Kaori Higo, Esther Lee, Yuki Ichinose (75)
T96/+6 Chie Arimura (78)

With #1 Mi-Jeong Jeon, #3 Sakura Yokomine, #5 Yuri Fudoh, #7 Miki Saiki, #9 Ji-Hee Lee, and #12 Bo-Bae Song sitting this one out, it's a prime opportunity for everyone within 5 shots of the lead to make their mark on the season.

4 comments:

spyder said...

Remind me of golf after say August 17th. I seem to be involved in paying attention to some other sporting events. I can even tell you split times in heats of individual events and relays, as well as difficulty scores in judged sessions. Hell for that matter i keep track of individual contests of direct confrontation using hands and weapons. I think i did hear something about some Irish golfer doing something, but that doesn't matter does it??

The Constructivist said...

Hee hee! No doubt Padraig and Amanda and Shinobu understand! I'm sure they're doing the same thing themselves. Now why shouln't golf be an Olympic sport? Oh, the format! Yeah, that had better be interesting.

spyder said...

Actually i think some of your efforts to develop an international cup championship system would lead to a useful format for Olympic golf. Tennis doesn't seem to have a problem, nor do several other such sports: yachting, equestrian, etc. Why not have a two week tour break every four years and let the world's best male and female golfers playoff some rounds?

The Constructivist said...

I think I figured out how to get it done in 5 days:

http://mlyhlss.blogspot.com/2008/08/on-international-team-golf.html