Saturday, April 23, 2011

Fujisankei Ladies Classic Saturday: Sun-Ju Ahn Holds onto Lead in Terrible Scoring Conditions

On a day when only a handful of players could manage to get into red numbers today at the Fujisankei Ladies Classic and it seemed like most of the field failed to break 75, 1st-round leader Sun-Ju Ahn made 4 birdies and 4 bogeys to remain at -4, which was just good enough for a 1-shot lead on LPGA transplant Young Kim, who opened with a bogey-free 32 to get to -4 but bogeyed her final hole of the day for a 37 on the back. Akiko Fukushima's 71 brought her within 5 of Ahn's lead, while Sakura Yokomine was the only other big-name player to break par, although her 71 moved her only into the top 25, 7 off the pace.

But at least Yokomine made the cut, which is more than Momoko Ueda, Miho Koga, Yuko Mitsuka, and defending champion Mayu Hattori can say. Ueda shot a birdieless 74, which doesn't sound that bad--until you realize she made 2 bogeys in her last 5 holes of the week on the front to miss the cut by a single shot. Koga, playing the front last as well, eagled a short par-5 midway through but joined Ueda with a bogey on her next-to-last hole. Mitsuka went 72-80 and it wasn't even the most painful fall from grace--Meena Lee went 70-81! Meanwhile, Li-Ying Ye birdied 3 of her last 4 holes of the day on the front side, too, but also came up 1 shot shy of playing tomorrow.

Take a look at the general carnage in round 2:

1st/-4 Sun-Ju Ahn (68-72)
2nd/-3 Young Kim (72-69)
3rd/-1 Kaori Yamamoto (72-71)
T4/E Inbee Park (72-72), Bo-Bae Song (71-73), Akane Iijima (71-73), Yukari Nishiyama (69-75)
T8/+1 Akiko Fukushima (74-71), Ji-Hee Lee (73-72), Saiki Fujita (71-74), Shinobu Moromizato (70-75), Kumiko Kaneda (70-75), Megumi Shimokawa (70-75), Mi-Jeong Jeon (69-76)

T15/+2 Eun-A Lim (76-70), Hiromi Mogi (75-71), Yumiko Yoshida (75-71), Shiho Oyama (73-73), Yukari Baba (72-74)
T21/+3 Sakura Yokomine (76-71), Chie Arimura (74-73), Hee Young Park (72-75), Miki Saiki (71-76)
T26/+4 Mie Nakata (76-72), Miho Mori [a] (75-73), Ayako Uehara (74-74), Na-Ri Kim (74-74), Asako Fujimoto (73-75), Julie Lu (73-75), Maiko Wakabayashi (71-77), Megumi Kido (71-77)
T37/+5 Lala Anai (74-75)
T45/+6 Rui Kitada (76-74), Teresa Lu (75-75), Esther Lee (75-75), Ji-Woo Lee (74-76), Ah-Reum Hwang (74-76), Miki Sakai (74-76), Ritsuko Ryu (73-77), Hyun-Ju Shin (71-79)

MC: Li-Ying Ye (79-72), Miho Koga (78-73), Momoko Ueda (77-74), Yuki Ichinose (73-78), Meena Lee (70-81), Mayu Hattori (79-73), So-Hee Kim (76-76), Miki Uehara (76-76), Yuko Mitsuka (72-80), Kaori Aoyama (77-76), Jae-Hee Bae (76-77), Rikako Morita (76-78), Na-Ri Lee (76-78), Kaori Ohe (76-78), Yun-Jye Wei (81-74), Mika Takushima (79-76), Onnarin Sattayabanphot (74-81), Erina Hara (73-82), Pei-Ying Tsai (78-78), Yeo-Jin Kang (78-79), Hiroko Ayada (78-80), Tao-Li Yang (81-79), Hiromi Takesue (77-83), Mai Arai (84-80)

WD: Soo-Yun Kang (80-WD)

At this rate, anyone under par at the end of the day tomorrow has a great chance to win this one! Let's see if someone like Yokomine or Jeon can fight back from earlier stumbles, or if Ahn can hang on and make her 1st win of 2011 a wire-to-wire one.

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