Saturday, March 5, 2011

Daikin Orchid Ladies Saturday: Fujita's Lead Slips to 1 as Miyazatos Miss Cut

1st-round leader Saiki Fujita shot her 2nd-straight sub-70 round in the Daikin Orchid Ladies debut event of the 2011 JLPGA season, but her 69 wasn't close to the lowest round of the day--that belonged to Miki Saiki, who fired a 7-birdie 65--and her lead slipped to 1 over Nikki Campbell (5-birdie 68) and Lala Anai (67 with a birdie-eagle finish). Even as many were going low on moving day, Ai Miyazato and Mika Miyazato moved in the wrong direction. Mikan missed the cut by a shot, going +2 in her last 4 holes, while Ai-sama saw her bogey-free run end at 18 holes as she bogeyed 10 and 12 and couldn't get those 2 strokes back that she needed to make the cut over her last 6 holes. Ouch!

Check out the scores of the leaders and notables and you'll see how costly going +1 over her last 7 holes of birdie-less golf was to Saiki. That's a pretty impressive bunch of names within 5 shots of her lead!

1st/-8 Saiki Fujita (67-69)
T2/-7 Lala Anai (70-67), Nikki Campbell (69-68)
4th/-6 Momoko Ueda (71-67)
T5/-5 Rikako Morita (73-66), Inbee Park (72-67), Bo-Mee Lee (71-68), Sun-Ju Ahn (69-70)
T9/-4 Miki Saiki (75-65), Meena Lee (74-66), Ah-Reum Hwang (72-68), Ji-Yai Shin (71-69)

T13/-3 Akiko Fukushima (74-67), Sakura Yokomine (72-69), Shiho Oyama (72-69), Mi-Jeong Jeon (72-69), Hee Young Park (72-69)
T18/-2 Young Kim (74-68), Yun-Jye Wei (74-68), Chie Arimura (72-70), Bo-Bae Song (72-70), Hiromi Mogi (72-70)
25th/-1 Akane Iijima (77-66)
T26/E Ji-Na Lim (74-70), Miki Uehara (73-71), Ayako Uehara (72-72), Na-Ri Lee (72-72), Yukari Baba (71-73), Mika Takushima (71-73)
T32/+1 Asuka Tsujimura (76-69), Shanshan Feng (75-70), Mie Nakata (74-71), Yuki Ichinose (74-71), Onnarin Sattayabanphot (73-72), Li-Ying Ye (73-72), Yuri Fudoh (72-73), Kumiko Kaneda (72-73)
T42/+2 Na-Ri Kim (75-71), Ji-Hee Lee (73-73), Soo-Yun Kang (73-73), Ji-Woo Lee (73-73), Shinobu Moromizato (72-74)
T50/+3 Jae-Hee Bae (76-71), Teresa Lu (75-72), Asako Fujimoto (75-72), Kaori Aoyama (75-72)

MC: Yuko Mitsuka (78-70), Rui Kitada (76-72), Mika Miyazato (75-73), Julie Lu (79-70), Ai Miyazato (76-73), Erina Hara (76-73), So-Hee Kim (75-74), Maiko Wakabayashi (73-76), Chieko Amanuma (78-72), Kaori Ohe (81-69), Eun-A Lim (77-73), Mayu Hattori (76-74), He Yong Choi (72-78), Hyun-Ju Shin (78-73), Esther Lee (78-73), Ritsuko Ryu (79-73), Riko Higashio (79-73), Sakurako Mori (81-74), Tamie Durdin (82-74), Ai-Yu Tu (79-79)
WD: Hiromi Takesue (78-WD)

Tough day at the office for a lot of really good golfers. Let's see if Fujita can go wire-to-wire, whether Anai can play the dark horse, whether Campbell or Ueda can return to the winner's circle, or whether some of the biggest names in women's golf can chase them all down tomorrow!

[Update 1 (6:18 pm): If you get a chance, check out Hee Young Park's roller coaster 69! Highlight: following up a double with an eagle. They don't call her The Rocket for nothing!]

[Update 2 (6:22 pm): Well, Tamie Durdin struggled all week, but at least she eagled her last hole of the tournament!]

[Update 3 (3/6/11, 9:45 am): I was too lazy to look up how long it's been since Ai-sama missed a cut on the JLPGA, but the Japan Times was on it!]

No comments: