Saturday, October 15, 2011

Sime Darby LPGA Malaysia Saturday: Na Yeon Choi Takes the Lead

Today it was Se Ri Pak's turn to tie the tournament record at the Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club, this time with a 7-birdie 65 that brought her to -8 througn 54 holes of the Sime Darby LPGA Malaysia, tied with world #1 Ya Ni Tseng (69) and fellow major winner in 2011, Stacy Lewis (72).  But that trio has fallen a bit behind the 3 overall leaders:  Na Yeon Choi (67), who made 4 birdies in her final 10 holes to get to -12, Brittany Lang (69), who was +2 and birdieless over her 1st 12 holes, but birdied 4 of her last 6 holes to pull within 1 of the lead, and Azahara Munoz (68), who was leading for much of the day after birdies on 4 of her 1st 7 holes brought her to -11, but who stumbled in the middle of the round and ended up 2 behind Choi.

With Suzann Pettersen 5 back and Paula Creamer 6 back, there's a small chance one of them might charge from behind to get her 10th career LPGA victory, and there's always the hope that Michelle Wie will do something special from 6 back (or even In-Kyung Kim from 7 back), but it's much more likely that we'll see someone from the final pairing--Choi, Lang, or Munoz--get her 1st win of 2011 tomorrow.  Me, I'm thinking Choi is going to come through, but I'll be rooting even harder for Ai and Mika Miyazato to make some kind of noise in the early morning (Ai's playing with Ji-Yai Shin and Amy Yang, so she has plenty of motivation) and for Mina Harigae and Tiffany Joh to finally put one really good round together (Harigae's come close, but Joh, unfortunately, hasn't).

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