Paula Creamer should be dominating the SemGroup Championship. With only three holes left to play yesterday, she was playing great and sitting pretty at -5, but for the third day in a row she made a pair of bogeys down the stretch to keep the hopes of the rest of the field alive. Two shots back, thanks to a fantastic 67, is Hall of Famer Juli Inkster, who lost in a playoff last year to Mi Hyun Kim and who is hoping to replicate Annika Sorenstam's playoff win over Creamer from last week. Lurking 8 shots back is world #1 Lorena Ochoa, who's keeping hope alive for her fifth straight win in as many starts. She shot her first sub-par 9 on the front yesterday but promptly gave both strokes back on the back to remain at +5 for the tournament. The only other players between Ochoa and Creamer are Brittany Lang (+1), Angela Stanford (+2), and Leta Lindley (+2). So it will be Ochoa and Lindley, Lang and Stanford, and Creamer and Inkster in the final 3 pairings today. Jeong Jang and Jamie Hullett and Jee Young Lee and Ji Young Oh round out the top 10 (as well as the short list of players in the field at +5 or better through the first 3 rounds).
More on those outsde the top 10 after I make pancakes for the girls!
[Update (1:44 pm): Hound Dog covers how the top 6 got there in more detail than I ever can (still no cable here!), and more broadly than Doug Ferguson did. But as neither of them paid respects to those who shot themselves out of the tournament on moving day--or gave credit to Dorothy Delasin and Jimin Kang for their fine 69s--I may as well. Hee Young Park continued her pattern this year of self-destructing in one of her rounds--this time it was an 80 that dropped her out of the top 40 yesterday. Meena Lee's 81 put her first top 10 in forever out of reach today. Na On Min's 78 and Candie Kung's 77 ended their comebacks after bad 1st rounds. Ji Young Oh's collapse on the 17th, which Hound Dog documents, made her odds of contending today very slim. And Ai Miyazato's 75, Jee Young Lee's 74, and Carin Koch's 74 didn't help their causes, either.]
No comments:
Post a Comment