Konica Minolta Cup Saturday: Baba Charges, But Moromizato Still Leads

Yukari Baba mounted a 4-birdie back-9 charge on moving day at the Konica Minolta Cup, but a walkoff bogey meant that 2nd-round leader and JLPGA wins and money-list leader Shinobu Moromizato maintained her 2-shot lead on the field. At -7, Moromizato has distanced herself from everyone but Bo-Bae Song, whose 69 brought her within 4 shots of the lead, and Maria Iida, who fell 5 off the pace after shooting a 72 today. But Iida was not alone. In fact, Saturday was moving backwards day for most of the field: 74s by Ayako Uehara and Chie Arimura dropped them far behind Moromizato, while a 76 by Sakura Yokomine and 74 by Momoko Ueda left them fighting for a top 20 finish tomorrow. Still, there were some good rounds out there, including a 69 by Miki Saiki--only the 6th sub-70 round of the week. And with only 5 players under par through 54 holes, a top 10 is well within reach for many.

Here's how the current top 10 and notables stand heading into the final round:

1st/-7 Shinobu Moromizato (72-67-70)
2nd/-5 Yukari Baba (71-71-69)
3rd/-3 Bo-Bae Song (73-71-69)
4th/-2 Maria Iida (72-70-72)
5th/-1 Ayako Uehara (68-73-74)
T6/+1 Tomoko Kusakabe (74-71-72), Chie Arimura (70-73-74)
T8/+2 Miki Saiki (71-78-69), Julie Lu (75-73-70), Hiromi Takesue (76-72-70), Kaori Aoyama (77-70-71), Kurumi Dohi (72-74-72), Erika Kikuchi (75-71-72), Na-Ri Lee (72-73-73)

T15/+3 Yuko Saitoh (77-70-72), Mi-Jeong Jeon (76-70-73)
T17/+4 Miho Koga (78-72-70), Eun-A Lim (78-71-71), Midori Yoneyama (76-72-72), Li-Ying Ye (72-75-73), Nikki Campbell (77-69-74), Sakura Yokomine (72-72-76)
T24/+5 Momoko Ueda (76-71-74), Maiko Wakabayashi (75-71-75)
T32/+6 Rikako Morita (76-75-71), Ji-Hee Lee (75-75-72), So-Hee Kim (74-74-74), Hyun-Ju Shin (75-72-75)
T38/+7 Yun-Jye Wei (79-72-72), Ji-Woo Lee (78-73-72), Tamie Durdin (77-73-73)
T45/+8 Ah-Reum Hwang (77-74-73), Yuri Fudoh (77-72-75), Mie Nakata (75-74-75)
T48/+9 Hiromi Mogi (77-74-74), Mayu Hattori (73-75-77)
T58/+12 Erina Hara (81-70-77)
T70/+15 Rui Kitada (73-78-80)

Let's see if Moromizato can avoid the big numbers tomorrow and get her 9th win and 3rd major on the JLPGA!

[Update 1 (11:11 am): Looks like the leaderboard is a little tighter over on the KLPGA.]