Sunday, February 27, 2011

HSBC Women's Champions Saturday: Arimura 1-up on Webb, 6-up on Tseng, Choi, and Yoo

Just like on Thursday, the 17th hole interrupted 16 holes of bogey-free golf from the JLPGA's Chie Arimura, but even though it forced her to accept her 1st round in the 70s of the week, she managed to maintain a slim 1-shot lead on Karrie Webb after 54 holes of the HSBC Women's Champions, even after the Hall of Famer birdied the 18th to post her 2nd 70 of the week. Meanwhile, Ya Ni Tseng bounced back from her 1st merely average round since January on Friday with 4 birdies in her last 10 holes to post a 69 and catch Na Yeon Choi and Sun Young Yoo at -5, 6 shots behind Arimura. For her to get her 5th win in her 5th start of 2011 from so far back would be truly awe-inspiring.

With In-Kyung Kim firing a great 67 to get to -4 and leapfrog Morgan Pressel (71) at -3 and Ai Miyazato and Mika Miyazato (70s) and Cristie Kerr (73) at -2, the leaderboard is packed. And with others bouncing back from bad starts--Karine Icher followed up an opening 77 with a pair of 69s to join Catriona Matthew and Brittany Lincicome at -1, while Song-Hee Kim did almost as well after an opening 79, going 68-70 to catch Suzanne Pettersen, Amy Yang, and Natalie Gulbis at +1--moving day must have been really exciting.

Too bad my DVR was taping the wrong golf while I was driving onechan and imoto back home from dropping the Full Metal Archivist off at the Toronto Pearson airport. But at least I didn't have to see Hee-Won Han, Katherine Hull, and Beatriz Recari (76s), Karen Stupples, Michelle Wie, Momoko Ueda, Inbee Park, Wendy Ward, and Se Ri Pak (77s), M.J. Hur (78), Vicky Hurst (79), and Seon Hwa Lee (80) move backwards in a big way. Maybe I'll just watch Sunday's round on "live" tape delay this afternoon! From the live scoring, it's been an amazing final round already. More on that in a bit....

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