Saturday, April 30, 2011

Cyber Agent Ladies Saturday: Fudoh-Shin Showdown in the Works

The best golfer this millennium on the JLPGA and the player some would argue has been the best on the planet since Lorena Ochoa's retirement are set for a Sunday showdown at the Cyber Agent Ladies in Chiba prefecture. Yup, Yuri Fudoh's bogey-free 66 and Ji-Yai Shin's hot-and-cold back 9 that included a pair of bogeys at its start and a pair of birdies at its finish have left them tied at -6, setting up a potential shootout between the Billion Yen Woman and the Final Round Queen! But with Sakura Yokomine, Ji-Hee Lee, Bo-Mee Lee, Mi-Jeong Jeon and the other 8 golfers within 5 shots of Fudoh and Shin's lead all looking to gate-crash that particular party, anything can happen tomorrow.

Let's take a look at the leaderboard:

T1/-6 Yuri Fudoh (72-66), Ji-Yai Shin (68-70)
T3/-3 Yumiko Yoshida (73-68), Sakura Yokomine (70-71), Saiki Fujita (69-72), Hiromi Mogi (67-74)
T7/-2 Ayako Uehara (73-69), Midori Yoneyama (73-69), Ji-Hee Lee (71-71), Bo-Mee Lee (71-71), Tamie Durdin (70-72), Mie Nakata (70-72), Na-Ri Kim (70-72), Ji Na Lim (68-74)

T15/-1 Ji-Woo Lee (72-71), Akane Iijima (71-72), Mi-Jeong Jeon (70-73), Mayu Hattori (70-73), Mihoko Iseri (66-77)
T20/E Yuko Mitsuka (76-68), So-Hee Kim (74-70), Chie Arimura (73-71), Jae-Hee Bae (73-71), Momoko Ueda (72-72), Lala Anai (70-74)
T28/+1 Asako Fujimoto (74-71), Riko Higashio (74-71), Miki Sakai (73-72), Kaori Ohe (70-75)
T33/+2 Rui Kitada (74-72), Miki Saiki (72-74), Soo-Yun Kang (72-74), Kumiko Kaneda (71-75), Na-Ri Lee (70-76), Yuki Ichinose (70-76)
T42/+3 Shinobu Moromizato (75-72), Ah-Reum Hwang (75-72), He-Yong Choi (72-75), Ritsuko Ryu (69-78), Yukari Baba (67-80)
T49/+4 Yun-Jye Wei (76-72), Hyun-Ju Shin (75-73), Maiko Wakabayashi (75-73), Miho Koga (73-75), Erina Hara (73-75), Julie Lu (73-75)

MC: Pei-Ying Tsai (77-72), Kaori Aoyama (76-73), Akiko Fukushima (75-74), Meena Lee (73-76), Li-Ying Ye (79-71), Nikki Campbell (74-76), Megumi Kido (75-76), Sakurako Mori (74-77), Rui Yokomine (77-75), Teresa Lu (78-75), Rikako Morita (78-76), Yuki Sakurai (77-77), Esther Lee (76-78), Miki Uehara (78-77), Onnarin Sattayabanphot (77-78)

As you can see, Shin was the only one among the 1st-round leaders not to implode on moving day. Even those playing well today often couldn't sustain their charges. Sakura Yokomine, for instance, went out in bogey-free 33 but came home in birdie-less 38 to fall 3 off the pace set by Fudoh and Shin. Tamie Durdin was -6 after 27 holes, thanks to a bogey-free 33, but she finished even worse than Yokomine, making 5 bogeys on her way to a 40. A pair of doubles and a bogey on the back derailed Mi-Jeong Jeon's effort to move to the top of the leaderboard. Mayu Hattori, meanwhile, made like Yokomine and Durdin, going fro bogey-free 33 to birdie-less 39. And Momoko Ueda finished bogey-triple-birdie for a roller-coaster 72 that left her 6 shots out of the lead.

All of which leads me to believe we should see a really exciting finish tomorrow. Will Fudoh and Shin pull away from the field or open the door for someone to make a comeback from 3 or more shots behind them? Stay tuned!

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