Nichirei PGM Ladies Friday: The Kids Are Alright

The JLPGA's finest have completed the 1st round of the Nichirei PGM Ladies and the 21-and-under crowd have taken hold of 1st place. 19-year-old Rikako Morita, 20-year-old Mai Arai, and 21-year-old Chie Arimura shot 67s, Arai and Arimura by playing bogey-free golf and Morita by making 7 birdies. But some of the biggest names on the JLPGA--among them, Mi-Jeong Jeon (1 back) and Sakura Yokomine (2 back)--are in the lead chase pack. Defending champion and #3-ranked Yuko Mitsuka isn't among them, however, as she opened with a 73. Nor is #2-ranked Ji-Hee Lee, who's 1 behind Mitsuka, or U.S. Women's Open qualifier Miki Saiki, who's 1 more back. It'll be interesting to see if Miho Koga, Hyun-Ju Shin, and Bo-Bae Song can get their seasons going this weekend. Koga closed with 4 straight birdies, so she's got some momentum, at least.

Here's how the top 10 and notables stand heading into the weekend:

T1/-5 Chie Arimura, Rikako Morita, Mai Arai (67)
4th/-4 Mi-Jeong Jeon (68)
T5/-3 Sakura Yokomine, Miho Koga, Hyun-Ju Shin (69)
T8/-2 Bo-Bae Song, Yuko Fukuda, Yuriko Ohtsuka (70)

T11/-1 Ayako Uehara, Maiko Wakabayashi, Li-Ying Ye, Yuki Ichinose (71)
T16/E Akane Iijima, Midori Yoneyama, Saiki Fujita, Julie Lu (72)
T31/+1 Yuko Mitsuka, Eun-A Lim, Tamie Durdin, Yukari Baba (73)
T40/+2 Ji-Hee Lee, Nikki Campbell, Ritsuko Ryu, Sakurako Mori (74)
T59/+3 Shinobu Moromizato, Erina Hara, Ah-Reum Hwang, Yuko Saitoh, Miki Saiki (75)
T69/+4 Rui Kitada, Mie Nakata, Kumiko Kaneda, Yun-Jye Wei (76)
T81/+5 Esther Lee (77)
T88/+6 Akiko Fukushima (78)
T101/+8 Woo-Soon Ko, Da-Ye Na (80)
106th/+9 Ji-Woo Lee (81)

Hoping to be able to catch some of this on the weekend on Chiba TV. It's our last weekend here before we head back to Western NY.