Life Card Ladies Golf Tournament Sunday: It's Yukari Baba for the Win

The top 3 players in the Life Card Ladies JLPGA event this week were closely bunched as they made the turn. Midori Yoneyama had recovered from her late-Saturday struggles and had 4 birdies and only 1 bogey through her first 11 holes to get to get to -7 for the tournament. First-round leader Shinobu Moromizato also had come strong out of the gates, reaching -6 through the 11th hole thanks to 4 birdies and no bogeys. But second-round leader Yukari Baba, despite a bogey on the second hole that had offset her opening birdie, had gotten to -7 herself with a birdie on the 10th. Moromizato was the first to fall off the pace with a bogey on the 12th that produced a 2-shot swing with Baba, who birdied the hole to open up a 1-shot lead on Yoneyama. But it was the 13th hole that was the decisive one. The 3-shot swing produced by a Baba hole-in-one and a Yoneyama bogey made the last 5 holes a formality. The only drama was whether Baba would remain in double digits under par. Here's the top 10:

#1/-9 Yukari Baba (70-69-68) ¥10,800,000

T2/-6 Shinobu Moromizato (68-74-68), Midori Yoneyama (69-71-70) ¥4,740,000

#4/-3 Yuko Mitsuka (69-73-71) ¥3,600,000

T5/E So-Hee Kim (74-73-69), Ai Ogawa (76-70-70), Ji-Hee Lee (74-70-72) ¥2,500,000
　 　
T8/+1 Ayako Uehara (73-71-73), Miho Koga (74-69-74) ¥1,650,000

T10/+2 Bo-Bae Song (76-71-71), Izumi Narita (74-73-71), Mi-Jeong Jeon (74-72-72), Chie Arimura (73-73-72), Akane Iijima (72-72-74) ¥1,051,200

Other notables include:

T15/+3 Miki Saiki, Yuri Fudoh, Erina Hara
T26/+5 Sakura Yokomine
T35/+7 Hyun-Ju Shin
T41/+9 Akiko Fukushima, Hiroko Yamaguchi

With her win, Baba jumped to #5 on the JLPGA money list, behind Yamaguchi, Song, Shin, and Yokomine. Rounding out the top 10 are Koga, Lee, Fudoh, Moromizato, and Uehara. Momoko Ueda is now down to #31 on the list, about ¥18M behind the leaders, but it's looking more and more like she's committed to the Rookie of the Year race on the LPGA in 2008.