Saturday, August 16, 2008

NEC Karuizawa 72 Ladies Saturday: Erina Hara Takes Control

Erina Hara fired a bogey-free 63 in the 2nd round of the NEC Karuizawa 72 JLPGA event to open up a 6-shot lead on Miho Koga. Hara is 18 holes away from her 1st career JLPGA victory. Can she hang on? There's a strong chase pack that's unlikely to back down tomorrow, but are they too far back to put any pressure on the 20-year-old leader?

1st/-14 Hara (67-63)
2nd/-8 Koga (67-69)
3rd/-7 Akane Iijima (69-68)
T4/-6 Chie Arimura (70-68), Saiki Fujita (70-68), Bo-Bae Song (69-69), Ji-Hee Lee (69-69), Hyun-Ju Shin (69-69), Makoto Takemura (69-69), Eun-A Lim (68-70), Rui Kitada (68-70)

For the 2nd straight round, Koga carded a double bogey but still broke 70. Eun-A Lim finished birdie-eagle-par-birdie to pull within 8 of the lead.

T12/-5 Sakura Yokomine (72-67), Mayu Hattori (71-68), Ji-Woo Lee (70-69), Mi-Jeong Jeon (68-71)
T18/-4 Mie Nakata (73-67)
T23/-3 Midori Yoneyama (74-67), Na Zhang (72-69), Akiko Fukushima (69-72)
T29/-2 Ayako Uehara (72-70), Yuko Mitsuka (71-71)
T34/-1 Esther Lee (75-68), Maiko Wakabayashi (73-70), Hiromi Mogi (72-71), Nikki Campbell (71-72)
T43/E Shinobu Moromizato (74-70), Michiko Hattori (73-71), Kaori Higo (72-72)

Yokomine's bogey-free 67 was the 3rd-best round of the day, after Hara and amateur Asaka Fujimoto (who bounced back from an opening 77 with a 66 to make the cut wth 1 stroke to spare), but she still lost 4 strokes to the leader. Money-list leader Fukushima will need a good final round to keep Mi-Jeong Jeon and Ji-Hee Lee from making up ground on her.

Missing the cut by a surprisingly large margin were a surprisingly large number of JLPGA notables, including 1/4 of the JLPGA's Big 8:

T69/+3 Shiho Oyama (74-73), Miki Saiki (73-74), Ritsuko Ryu (73-74)
T79/+4 Hiroko Yamaguchi (75-73), Yukari Baba (74-74)
T92/+7 Yuki Ichinose (74-77)

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