Man, if Yuri Fudoh hadn't had that 1 double bogey in Saturday's round, it would have taken her only 13 holes to have made up Yuko Mitsuka's 5-shot lead on her after the second round of the Fujitsu Ladies JLPGA event this weekend. As it is, despite Mitsuka breaking her bogey-free streak at 37 holes and that 2-shot swing when she bogeyed and Fudoh birdied the par-3 13th, Mitsuka still has a 2-shot lead on the JLPGA's own living legend, because she actually had a 7-shot lead heading into the final round. Fudoh, by the way, is playing in the next-to-last pairing, so Mitsuka will at least know what she has to do to notch her 2nd win of the season.
In addition to the race for 1st, there's a neat race for 3rd going on, as well, between 2 players very high on the JLPGA money list. Miho Koga jumped out to a 32 on the front but lost her momentum with 5 straight pars on the back. Still, she has a 1-shot lead on Akiko Fukushima, who gave back her back-to-back birdies with back-to-back bogeys on the front and remains at E on her day, -8 for the tournament, after completing the 13th hole 2 groups behind Koga.
More coming when the JLPGA leaderboard unfreezes!
[Update 1 (8:42 am): Fudoh did it--in a playoff! Unbelievable! More soon....]
[Update 2 (9:04 am): Simply amazing! Fudoh birdied the 374-yard par-4 15th and parred her way in for a 66 that brought her to -13. Mitsuka held onto a 1-shot lead until she made her 3rd bogey of the day on a par 3--this time, the 186-yard 17th hole--and failed to birdie the 18th.]
[Update 3 (9:06 am): Wow! Then it took 5 holes to win the playoff! More later!]
[Update 4 (11:31 am): So here are the final results:
1st/-13 Fudoh (69-68-66) [won in 5-hole playoff]
2nd/-13 Mitsuka (66-64-73)
3rd/-10 Keiko Sasaki (70-70-66)
4th/-9 Miho Koga (69-70-68)
T5/-7 Shinobu Moromizato (70-71-68), Mayu Hattori (70-67-72)
6th/-6 Shiho Oyama (70-69-71)
T8/-5 Saiki Fujita (68-72-71), Akane Iijima (69-70-72), Akiko Fukushima (63-73-75)
Nice job by Sasaki to grab 3rd place from Koga! It was a 32 on the back that did it when Koga parred out after her opening 32. Also a good sign for Oyama that she shot 3 rounds under par. But a painful final-hole triple bogey for Fukushima....
T11/-4 Hiromi Mogi (72-69-71), Nikki Campbell (69-72-71), Kaori Higo (70-70-72)
T15/-3 Erina Hara (68-75-70), Tamie Durdin (70-68-75)
T18/-2 Esther Lee (71-74-69), Sakura Yokomine (67-73-74), Eun-A Lim (71-69-74)
T23/-1 Asako Fujimoto (69-73-73)
T33/+1 Hiroko Yamaguchi (69-74-74)
51st/+9 Ritsuko Ryu (70-75-79)
Nice final-round move by Esther Lee on a day that many bigger names found quite difficult. And congrats to amateur Fujimoto for staying under par for the tournament, despite those 4 bogeys in her final 7 holes.]
[Update 5 (11:41 am): Here's the new money list:
1. Ji-Hee Lee ￥105.85M
2. Akiko Fukushima ￥86.29M
3. Miho Koga ￥81.07M
4. Sakura Yokomine ￥74.39M
5. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥73.96M
6. Yuri Fudoh ￥73.23M
7. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥64.20M
8. Yuko Mitsuka ￥63.05M
9. Erina Hara ￥60.82M
10. Ayako Uehara ￥58.92M
11. Shinobu Moromizato ￥51.69M
12. Eun-A Lim ￥49.69M
13. Bo-Bae Song ￥49.41M
14. Hiromi Mogi ￥48.65M
15. Akane Iijima ￥48.52M
16. Shiho Oyama ￥48.17M
17. Esther Lee ￥44.54M
18. Momoko Ueda ￥43.87M
19. Chie Arimura ￥40.90M
20. Hiroko Yamaguchi ￥40.86M
21. Yukari Baba ￥40.76M
22. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥40.73M
23. Miki Saiki ￥40.34M
24. Ji-Woo Lee ￥37.68M
25. Midori Yoneyama ￥33.27M
26. Rui Kitada ￥31.26M
27. Saiki Fujita ￥29.27M
28. Mayu Hattori ￥27.90M
29. Ji-Yai Shin ￥24.18M
30. Mie Nakata ￥23.68M
With her 4th win of the season, Yuri Fudoh puts herself right back into the race for the money-list lead! This is going to be a very interesting home stretch on the JLPGA!]
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