CAT Ladies Overview: Mi-Jeong Jeon Closes with 65 for 20th JLPGA Victory

Mi-Jeong Jeon fired a final-round bogey-free 64 to take the CAT Ladies by 4 shots over Mayu Hattori, Rikako Morita, and Bo-Mee Lee.  To build on bangkokbobby's summary, Jeon trailed the trio she ended up beating by 2 shots after the completion of the 2nd round, and even a 3-birdie 33 on the front left her 3 behind Hattori, 2 behind Lee, and 1 behind Morita as they made the turn.  Jeon poured it on with birdies on 10, 11, 13, 15, and 18 for a closing 32 that turned the tables on the leaders, who struggled home with a 39 (Hattori), 38 (Lee), and 37 (Morita).  Probably the biggest key for Jeon was that she birdied all 5 par 5s today, as her last 3 birdies of the day all came on par 5s.

For the JLPGA's 2012 money list leader, her 20th career victory on tour couldn't have come at a better time.  Hattori was (and remains) #3 on the money list and could have pulled within 10 million yen of Jeon with a win.  As it is, though, Jeon has now extended her lead to nearly 30 million yen over Sun-Ju Ahn, who dominated the JLPGA the last 2 seasons but who was idle this week.  With a scoring average of 69.92 and inconsistent play from most of those immediately following her this season, Jeon is now the 1st 3-time winner on tour.

1. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥91.26M
2. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥61.88M
3. Mayu Hattori ￥57.70M
4. Ritsuko Ryu ￥52.22M
5. Chie Arimura ￥52.08M
6. Miki Saiki ￥50.21M
7. Ji-Hee Lee ￥45.57M
8. Bo-Mee Lee ￥44.56M
9. Sakura Yokomine ￥41.11M
10. Shanshan Feng ￥40.48M
11. Rikako Morita ￥39.14M
12. Yumiko Yoshida ￥31.34M
13. Inbee Park ￥29.62M
14. Hiromi Mogi ￥29.59M
15. Soo-Yun Kang ￥28.64M
16. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥28.22M
17. Yuri Fudoh ￥26.69M
18. Mihoko Iseri ￥26.56M
19. Kaori Ohe ￥24.99M
20. Megumi Kido ￥22.44M
21. Esther Lee ￥21.22M
22. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥21.12M
23. Shinobu Moromizato ￥20.35M
24. Yuki Ichinose ￥20.24M
25. Erina Hara ￥18.68M
26. Airi Saitoh ￥17.84M
27. Ayako Uehara ￥17.82M
28. Ji-Yai Shin ￥17.78M
29. Miki Sakai ￥17.10M
30. Yukari Baba ￥17.10M
31. Akane Iijima ￥16.22M
32. Erika Kikuchi ￥16.12M
33. Teresa Lu ￥16.01M
34. Bo-Bae Song ￥15.63M
35. Na-Ri Lee￥15.60M
36. Eun-Bi Jang ￥15.54M
37. Rui Kitada ￥15.34M
38. So-Hee Kim ￥15.34M
39. Young Kim￥15.02M
40. Harukyo Nomura ￥14.48M
41. Na-Ri Kim ￥13.60M
42. Yeo-Jin Kang ￥13.50M
43. Junko Omote￥13.07M
44. Yuko Fukuda ￥12.19M
45. Kumiko Kaneda ￥11.38M
46. Da-Ye Na ￥10.59M
47. Asako Fujimoto￥9.45M
48. Shiho Toyonaga ￥9.34M
49. Natsu Nagai ￥8.97M
50. Li-Ying Ye ￥8.92M

On deck is the Nitori Ladies, which features the return of Sun-Ju Ahn and Ji-Hee Lee to action everyone in the top 10 except Chie Arimura (and of course Shanshan Feng), and a chance for Ritsuko Ryu to defend her title.  Jeon won it in 2010, so she's in great position to cross the 100 million yen mark next week, as well.  Should be pretty interesting!