Third-round leader Shinobu Moromizato got off to a shaky start today in the Konica Minolta Cup, making 2 bogeys in her 1st 4 holes, so you'd think her 2-shot lead would have been in jeopardy, right? Wrong! The only player to make up ground on her was Mi-Jeong Jeon, who had cut her 10-shot deficit in half in just 5 holes, but she stayed at E for most of her final 13 holes (making a bogey on the 8th and a birdie on the 10th for variety's sake. After Moromizato righted the ship with birdies on the 4th and 6th holes, her win was virtually assured. Yukari Baba had bogeyed 3 of her 1st 7 holes and would go onto shoot another 39 on the back to drop all the way back to +1 for the tournament. But she'd still finish T3, as what must have been terrible weather sabotaged almost everyone. Moromizato would cruise to her 6th victory and 2nd major of the season, bring her career totals to 9 and 3.
Here's how the top 10 and notables ended up:
1st/-6 Shinobu Moromizato (72-67-70-73)
2nd/E Mi-Jeong Jeon (76-70-73-69)
T3/+1 Chie Arimura (70-73-74-72), Maria Iida (72-70-72-75), Yukari Baba (71-71-69-78)
T6/+3 Rikako Morita (76-75-71-69), Miho Koga (78-72-70-71), Nikki Campbell (77-69-74-71), Erika Kikuchi (75-71-72-73)
T10/+4 Sakura Yokomine (72-72-76-72), Na-Ri Lee (72-73-73-74), Ayako Uehara (68-73-74-77)
T13/+5 Yuri Fudoh (77-72-75-69)
T15/+6 Hiromi Mogi (77-74-74-69), Hyun-Ju Shin (75-72-75-72), Momoko Ueda (76-71-74-73), Miki Saiki (71-78-69-76), Bo-Bae Song (73-71-69-81)
T23/+7 Yun-Jye Wei (79-72-72-72), Midori Yoneyama (76-72-72-75), Julie Lu (75-73-70-77)
T29/+8 Ji-Hee Lee (75-75-72-74), Yuko Saitoh (77-70-72-77)
T33/+9 Mie Nakata (75-74-75-73), Maiko Wakabayashi (75-71-75-76), Eun-A Lim (78-71-71-77)
T37/+10 So-Hee Kim (74-74-74-76), Li-Ying Ye (72-75-73-78)
T41/+11 Ah-Reum Hwang (77-74-73-75), Ji-Woo Lee (78-73-72-76), Tamie Durdin (77-73-73-76)
T51/+13 Erina Hara (81-70-77-73)
T58/+15 Mayu Hattori (73-75-77-78)
T67/+19 Rui Kitada (73-78-80-76)
I'll be back later once the JLPGA updates their money list. For now, I'll close by noting that Moromizato has a chance for a record-breaking season in winnings, not to mention a Grand Slam.
[Update 1 (10:36 am): Only 3 players in JLPGA history have won more money than Moromizato: Shiho Oyama in 2006, Momoko Ueda in 2007, and Yuri Fudoh in 2003 and 2004. And there are still 11 events for Moromizato to enter!
1. Shinobu Moromizato ￥133.90M
2. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥93.34M
3. Sakura Yokomine ￥90.00M
4. Chie Arimura ￥87.26M
5. Yuko Mitsuka ￥64.15M
6. Miho Koga ￥49.37M
7. Ji-Hee Lee ￥48.66M
8. Yuko Saitoh ￥40.88M
9. Yukari Baba ￥39.72M
10. Eun-A Lim ￥36.63M
11. Ayako Uehara ￥31.27M
12. Erina Hara ￥30.11M
13. Ah-Reum Hwang ￥29.52M
14. Akiko Fukushima ￥28.74M
15. Rikako Morita ￥26.71M
16. Tamie Durdin ￥26.64M
17. Rui Kitada ￥25.53M
18. Yuri Fudoh ￥25.34M
19. Nikki Campbell ￥24.58M
20. Miki Saiki ￥24.36M
21. Midori Yoneyama ￥23.90M
22. Na-Ri Lee ￥22.63M
23. Li-Ying Ye ￥22.54M
24. Ji-Woo Lee ￥22.34M
25. Saiki Fujita ￥21.94M
26. Momoko Ueda ￥21.03M
27. Hiromi Mogi ￥20.67M
28. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥19.73M
29. Bo-Bae Song ￥18.08M
30. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥17.37M
31. So-Hee Kim ￥17.23M
32. Akane Iijima ￥15.70M
33. Kaori Aoyama ￥15.11M
34. Mie Nakata ￥14.99M
35. Julie Lu ￥14.21M
With the Japan Women's Open coming in 3 weeks, it'll be interesting to see if Moromizato decides to continue riding her hot streak or take a week off before the 3rd major of the JLPGA season. Right now, she's featured on the players' line-up for next week's Munsingwear Tokai Classic, but as they haven't updated their site with a full field list and give no indication whether Momoko Ueda has entered the tournament, I'm not convinced that Moromizato is really going to go for 3 wins in a row. Both Ueda and Moromizato are listed in the field for the Miyagi TV Cup Dunlop Ladies Open the following week, so I guess it's possible that she'll be following the Japanese work ethic and not taking a week off. We'll see!]
[Update 2 (7:52): It was also a 6-shot win on the KLPGA, but not by one of the Big 3; instead, they all faltered while Ji Na Lim cruised to victory. Wonder if she's related to Eun-A Lim?]
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