Stanley Ladies Friday: The Field Strikes Back

With Sakura Yokomine, Shinobu Moromizato, and Mi-Jeong Jeon triopolizing the winner's circle on the JLPGA the last month and a half, it's no surprise I began talking about the possibility of a Big 3 distancing themselves from the rest of the tour. Only problem with that theory is that Yuko Mitsuka barely trails Jeon on the money list, Ji-Hee Lee is playing really well, you can never count out veteran stars like Yuri Fudoh and Akiko Fukushima, and young guns like Miho Koga, Erina Hara, and Chie Arimura have been playing pretty well lately. And after the 1st round of the Stanley Ladies, the putative Big 3 have a lot of ground to make up on Hiromi Mogi, who shot a 7-birdie 66, and Chie Arimura, who shot a 6-birdie 67. How much? Check out the top 10 and notables:

1st/-6 Hiromi Mogi (66)
T2/-5 Chie Arimura, Natsu Nagai (67)
4th/-4 Ji-Woo Lee (68)
T5/-3 Rui Kitada, Li-Ying Ye, Kuniko Maeda (69)
T8/-2 Mi-Jeong Jeon, Midori Yoneyama, Kumiko Kaneda, Da-Ye Na, So-Hee Kim, Junko Omote, Yui Kawahara, Yuka Shiroto (70)

Jeon came back from an early double to play bogey-free golf the rest of the way. Despite making 6 bogeys through her 1st 14 holes, Sakura Yokomine had fought back to -1 with her birdie on the par-4 15th. But a double on the par-4 17th sunk her to T38. And Shinobu Moromizato sandwiched 4 bogeys between a pair of birdies in the middle 13 holes of her round today.

T17/-1 Miho Koga, Eun-A Lim, Asako Fujimoto (71)
T25/E Ah-Reum Hwang, Tamie Durdin, Nikki Campbell, Yukari Baba, Mie Nakata, Yuko Saitoh, Yuki Ichinose (72)
T38/+1 Sakura Yokomine, Erina Hara, Saiki Fujita, Miki Saiki, Maiko Wakabayashi, Mayu Hattori (73)
T51/+2 Shinobu Moromizato, Akiko Fukushima, Akane Iijima, Rikako Morita (74)
T71/+3 Ayako Uehara, Yun-Jye Wei (75)
T83/+4 Hyun-Ju Shin, Sakurako Mori (76)
T88/+5 Mai Arai (77)
T105/+10 Riko Higashio, Esther Lee (82)
107th/+11 Woo-Soon Ko (83)

This weekend on the JLPGA should be particularly interesting, as Chie Arimura and Erina Hara could build some serious momentum for her premiere at the Evian Masters next week. Yuko Mitsuka must have headed over early, as she's not in the Stanley field this week.