Sunday, August 21, 2011

CAT Ladies Sunday: Chie Arimura Holds Off Rikako Morita for 9th JLPGA Victory

23-year-old Chie Arimura started the final round of the CAT Ladies with a 2-shot lead on 21-year-old Rikako Morita, but she found herself 1 down for the 1st time all day after her challenger made her 5th birdie of the round on the 553-yard par 5. But an Arimura birdie and Morita bogey on the very next hole, a 421-yard par 4, gave her the lead right back and she matched Morita par for par on the final 2 holes to take her 9th JLPGA title and 2nd victory in her last 4 starts. A bogey-free 34 on her final 9 brought Miki Saiki to -8 for the week, but she ran out of holes in her attempt to chase down the 2 leaders, while Ji-Hee Lee stalled with a 1-under-par 36 on the same 9 and was caught by Yukari Baba at -7. As a result, Arimura pulled right between Saiki and Lee on the JLPGA money list, with all 3 of them about 1 win away from challenging Sun-Ju Ahn, who just missed a top 10 this week, for the top spot.

Here are the results:

1st/-11 Chie Arimura (69-67-72)
2nd/-10 Rikako Morita (69-69-71)
3rd/-8 Miki Saiki (69-74-68)
T4/-7 Ji-Hee Lee (73-69-70), Yukari Baba (72-70-70)
T6/-6 Hiromi Takesue (70-75-68), Akiko Fukushima (70-72-71), Na-Ri Kim (69-72-72), Ayako Uehara (70-70-73), Asako Fujimoto (66-74-73)

T11/-5 Ah-Reum Hwang (76-68-70), Sun-Ju Ahn (73-71-70), Esther Lee (73-70-71)
T14/-4 Sakura Yokomine (71-74-70), Rui Kitada (71-73-71), Soo-Yun Kang (70-73-72), Li-Ying Ye (74-68-73), Lala Anai (70-72-73)
T19/-3 Eun-Bi Jang (71-74-71), Junko Omote (70-74-72), Julie Lu (72-71-73), Na-Ri Lee (72-69-75)
T25/-2 Saiki Fujita (75-71-71), Mayu Hattori (75-70-72), Nikki Campbell (72-72-73), Tamie Durdin (72-72-73), Kumiko Kaneda (68-74-75)
T32/-1 Mika Takushima (72-75-71), Yuko Mitsuka (76-70-72), Mi-Jeong Jeon (71-74-73), Akane Iijima (70-71-77)
T38/E Eun-A Lim (75-72-72), Miki Uehara (71-75-73)
44th/+1 Young Kim (74-72-74)
T45/+2 Teresa Lu (71-76-74)
T47/+3 Kaori Ohe (74-74-74), Hiromi Mogi (73-75-74), Onnarin Sattayabanphot (74-73-75), Ritsuko Ryu (73-73-76)
53rd/+4 Shiho Oyama (77-71-75)
55th/+6 Hyun-Ju Shin (74-74-77)

Ex-LPGAer (and Class of '06er) Na-Ri Kim wasted a couple of eagles in her final round but still posted her 2nd top 10 in a row. She's put herself in great position to keep her JLPGA card. It'll be interesting now to see if she and the other ex-LPGAers or dual LPGA-JLPGA members can make a push in the last 3 months of the JLPGA season. Here's how their money list stands:

1. Sun-Ju Ahn ¥68.07M
2. Miki Saiki ¥56.82M
3. Chie Arimura ¥56.62M
4. Ji-Hee Lee ¥55.73M
5. Sakura Yokomine ¥51.59M
6. Yuri Fudoh ¥36.32M
7. Hiromi Mogi ¥29.08M
8. Rui Kitada ¥28.86M
9. Ayako Uehara ¥27.11M
10. Inbee Park ¥24.33M
11. Kumiko Kaneda ¥23.09M
12. Bo-Bae Song ¥22.35M
13. Yukari Baba ¥21.13M
14. Shanshan Feng ¥18.92M
15. Rikako Morita ¥18.85M
16. Asako Fujimoto ¥18.16M
17. Mayu Hattori ¥17.94M
18. Saiki Fujita ¥16.86M
19. Akiko Fukushima ¥15.97M
20. Mi-Jeong Jeon ¥15.76M
21. Teresa Lu ¥15.34M
22. Ji-Woo Lee ¥15.19M
23. Bo-Mee Lee ¥14.65M
24. Hyun-Ju Shin ¥14.40M
25. Shinobu Moromizato ¥14.33M
26. Ritsuko Ryu ¥14.14M
27. Eun-A Lim ¥13.99M
28. Junko Omote ¥13.97M
29. Ah-Reum Hwang ¥13.97M
30. Momoko Ueda ¥13.77M
31. Na-Ri Lee ¥13.24M
32. Na-Ri Kim ¥13.22M
33. Eun-Bi Jang ¥12.77M
34. Young Kim ¥12.29M
35. Shiho Oyama ¥12.03M
36. Esther Lee ¥11.99M
37. Ji-Yai Shin ¥11.91M
38. Soo-Yun Kang ¥11.89M
39. Kaori Aoyama ¥11.13M
40. Akane Iijima ¥10.99M
41. Miho Koga ¥10.67M
42. Nikki Campbell ¥10.58M
43. So-Hee Kim ¥10.48M
44. Mie Nakata ¥10.25M
45. Yumiko Yoshida ¥9.65M
46. Yeo-Jin Kang ¥8.97M
47. Yuki Ichinose ¥8.16M
48. Megumi Kido ¥8.16M
49. Satsuki Oshiro ¥7.98M
50. Miki Sakai ¥7.48M

Next up is the Nitori Ladies, which features the return of Yuri Fudoh to JLPGA action along with the rest of the top 20 except for LPGAers Inbee Park and Shanshan Feng, who will be competing in the CN Canadian Women's Open. Should be a real dogfight in the dog days of summer on the JLPGA!

[Update 1 (8/22/11, 10:58 pm): Great info, photos, and videos from bangkokbobby!]

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