Friday, September 19, 2008

Munsingwear Ladies Tokai Classic Friday: Game On!

Sakura Yokomine bogeyed her final hole and Shinobu Moromizato birdied her last 3 to end up in a tie for the lead after the 1st round of the Munsingwear Ladies Tokai Classic. But at -4, their lead is tenuous at best, when you take into account who's chasing them: Ji-Hee Lee and Hiroko Yamaguchi shot bogey-free 69s, Miho Koga and Momoko Ueda made 4 birdies each on their way to 70s, Erina Hara, Yuko Mitsuka, and Yuri Fudoh shot 71s, and Mi-Jeong Jeon and Ayako Uehara opened up with even-par 72s. And that's just the best of the players within easy reach of the lead heading into the weekend:

T1/-4 Yokomine, Moromizato (68)
T3/-3 Lee, Yamaguchi, Namika Omata, Yayoi Arasaki (69)
T7/-2 Koga, Ueda (70)
T9/-1 Hara, Mitsuka, Fudoh, Nobuko Kizawa, Yoko Inoue, Aki Takamura, Asako Fujimoto (71)

Yokomine's 33 was the lowest 9-hole score in the field, by the way.

T16/E Jeon, Uehara, Mie Nakata, Mayu Hattori, Midori Yoneyama, Ji-Woo Lee, Yuki Sakurai (72)
T30/+1 Akane Iijima (73)
T43/+2 Kaori Higo, Tamie Durdin (74)
T57/+3 Yukari Baba, Esther Lee (75)

Scoring was high for the rest of the JLPGA's top players:

T70/+4 Bo-Bae Song, Chie Arimura, Hiromi Mogi, Rui Kitada, Maiko Wakabayashi (76)
T91/+6 Ritsuko Ryu, Yuki Ichinose (78)
T99/+8 Yun-Jye Wei (80)

With Akiko Fukushima, Ai Miyazato, Hyun-Ju Shin, Eun-A Lim, and Na Zhang taking the week off and Miki Saiki and Shiho Oyama rocking Mission Hills and making it to the finals of LPGA Q-School, this week represents a great opportunity for those near the top of the leaderboard. Who will take advantage?

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