Saturday, June 7, 2008

Resort Trust Ladies Saturday: Clash of the JLPGA Titans Brewing

Scores continued to be low in the second round of the Resort Trust Ladies event on the JLPGA. This time, it was Miki Saiki's turn to go low, as she turned in a bogey-free 66 to reach -10 for the tournament. Mi-Jeong Jeon made 7 birdies but could only manage a 67, so she remained 1 shot back of Saiki. Hiromi Mogi's bogey-free 68 brought her within 2 shots of the leader. This trio has opened up a small gap on the rest of the top 10:

1st/-10 Saiki (68-66)
2nd/-9 Jeon (68-67)
3rd/-8 Mogi (69-68)
T4/-6 Sakura Yokomine (68-70), Kaori Higo (66-72)
T6/-5 Esther Lee (69-70), Mikiyo Nishizuka (67-72)
T8/-4 Mie Nakata (72-68), Akane Iijima (70-70), Ji-Hee Lee (70-70)

Other notables have been either unable to go low or stay low:

T11/-3 Ritsuko Ryu (73-68), Hiroko Yamaguchi (71-70), Eun-A Lim (70-71), Maiko Wakabayashi (70-71)
T16/-2 Yukari Baba (72-70), Miho Koga (71-71), Yuko Mitsuka (71-71), Chie Arimura (71-71), Yun-Jye Wei (68-74)
T26/-1 Midori Yoneyama (73-70), Akiko Fukushima (72-71), Yui Kawahara (72-71), Ayako Uehara (70-73)
T33/E Shiho Oyama (74-70), Na Zhang (70-74)
T44/+2 Erina Hara (73-73), Shinobu Moromizato (72-74)
T67/+5 Yuri Fudoh (73-76)

Yes, you read that right: Fudoh missed a cut.

Meanwhile, Koga double-bogeyed the birdie-able 18th to drop back to -2; she was the only player who made the cut to go over par at all on that hole. Fukushima had an even more disappointing round: after eagling the 1st and birdieing 2 of the next 3 holes, she was off to a fantastic start, but doubled the 5th, came back with 2 birdies, then doubled the 13th and bogeyed the 16th and 17th before birdieing the 18th. Plus Yokomine was +1 over her final 8 holes. So many players had their chances to get within shouting distance of the 3 leaders. But it's going to take a super-low round for anyone to make up ground on Saiki or Jeon, who are unlikely to back up. It'll be interesting to see if Mogi can keep up with this pair of JLPGA titans who have not yet had titanic seasons.

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