Saturday, November 19, 2011

Daio Paper ElleAir Ladies Friday and Saturday: Fujita and Ueno Lead; Ahn and Yokomine Lurk

No time to do a full-blown set-up post for the Daio Paper ElleAir Ladies, but I can report that veteran Saiki Fujita and youngster Aiko Ueno lead the way at -10 and -9, respectively, while JLPGA money-list leader Sun-Ju Ahn is only 4 off the lead and her chasers Sakura Yokomine and Chie Arimura are 5 and 8 back, respectively.  It'll be interesting to see tomorrow if the big names will make a run at the leaders, if other Koreans in the hunt like Young Kim and Bo-Bae Song at -6, Ji-Hee Lee at -5, or Hyun-Ju Shin at -4 can join the chase, or whether Japanese veterans like Rui Kitada (-6), Hiromi Takesue (-5), Hiromi Mogi (-4), Kaori Aoyama (-4), Miho Koga (-3), Yukari Baba (-3), or Mihoko Iseri (-3) will make more of a run than youngsters Kaori Ohe (-4), Erina Hara (-3), Mayu Hattori (-2), or Harukyo Nomura (-2).

With the likes of Shiho Oyama, Ayako Uehara, Nikki Campbell, Soo-Yun Kang, Kumiko Kaneda, Ritsuko Ryu, Rikako Morita, Maiko Wakabayashi, Yuki Ichinose, Onnarin Sattayabanphot, and Yuki Sakurai missing the cut, and a super-hot Shanshan Feng 7 shots off the lead, this tournament shows just how competitive the JLPGA is this year and what an accomplishment keeping your card really is.  It's looking like So-Hee Kim at -2 through 36 holes will knock Ji-Yai Shin out of the #50 spot on the money list.  What will the JLPGA do about players like Shin and Ai Miyazato, who will have (barely) played the required minimum number of events in 2011 but failed to make the top 50 on the money list?

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