Sankyo Ladies Sunday: Jeon Collapses, Miyazato Wins!

What a weekend for the Constructivist family! First, we found out last night that the Full Metal Archivist's favorite athlete, Daisuke Takahashi, won the Finlandia Trophy in his first skating competition of his comeback from major knee surgery after an injury he suffered last October. Then, I woke up this morning to find that Ai Miyazato won the Sankyo Ladies Open!

Miyazato's 1st JLPGA win since 2006 came at the expense of Mi-Jeong Jeon, whose bid for a wire-to-wire win fell apart over her last 6 holes, when she twice lost a 3-shot lead. Thanks to 9 birdies in her previous 22 holes, Miyazato had pulled within 3 of the lead when she stepped onto the 14th tee in the group ahead of Jeon. And for a brief moment when Jeon bogeyed the short par-4 15th to fall back to -7 overall and -2 on her day, Miyazato had pulled within 2. But she proceeded to bogey the 155-yard par-3 16th to hand Jeon a 3-shot lead with 2 holes to play. It was then that Jeon's demons from the end of last season and the beginning of this one, when she coughed up various leads down the home stretch, reared their ugly heads. She doubled the 17th--and the 18th--to fall back into a tie with Mayu Hattori for 2nd place. Hattori, playing in the final group with Jeon and an imploding Akane Iijima, had gotten to -3 after a birdie on the 367-yard par-4 14th, but couldn't find a birdie the rest of the way. In the end, then, 2 closing pars were good enough for Ai-sama to get her 2nd worldwide win of 2009.

Dai-chan's win was also rather less than picture perfect. His short program was almost perfect, until a surprise at the very end of his program. Definitely keep watching through the 3-minute mark to see what happened then--and stay till the end of the clip to see the reaction of ones of the little Finnish girls whose role was to bring him the flowers thrown onto the ice after his performance:



But thanks to his huge lead after the short program, he could afford some wobbly jumps--including what looked to be an attempt at a quad to the Full Metal Archivist and me--in his free skate:



Unfortunately, Ai-sama's fans are a little less web-savvy than Dai-chan's. The only clip on youtube was a 50-second home video someone put up of the end of the award ceremony, filmed from 75 yards behind the main event. I'll be back with the final results and new JLPGA money list. Hopefully by then Ai-sama's fans will have gotten on the ball!

[Update 1 (9:00 am): Here are the final results:

1st/-4 Ai Miyazato (74-70-68)
T2/-3 Mayu Hattori (69-73-71), Mi-Jeong Jeon (66-73-74)
T4/-1 Ji-Hee Lee (75-69-71), Michie Ohba (70-74-71)
T6/E Yun-Jye Wei (74-71-71), Rui Kitada (72-72-72), Sakura Yokomine (71-73-72)
T9/+1 Nikki Campbell (76-69-72), Akane Iijima (70-70-77)

T11/+2 Julie Lu (74-74-70), Miho Koga (71-74-73), Chie Arimura (71-73-74)
14th/+3 Yuko Mitsuka (80-70-69)
T15/+4 Miki Saiki (78-73-69)
T17/+5 Sakurako Mori (75-72-74)
T20/+6 Momoko Ueda (77-72-73)
T23/+7 Shinobu Moromizato (75-74-74), Yukari Baba (73-74-76)
T27/+8 Yuki Ichinose (75-72-77)
T33/+9 Akiko Fukushima (78-73-74), Ayako Uehara (74-74-77), Yuri Fudoh (74-72-79)
T39/+10 Kumiko Kaneda (73-78-75), Esther Lee (76-74-76), Na-Ri Lee (73-76-78), Maiko Wakabayashi (71-74-81)
T44/+11 Midori Yoneyama (76-75-76), Ah-Reum Hwang (77-73-77)
T48/+12 So-Hee Kim (75-76-77)
T54/+15 Ji-Woo Lee (75-76-80)
T56/+16 Mai Arai (76-72-84)

As you can see, Ai-sama was fortunate that so many good players had terrible tournaments. But that's golf for ya!]

[Update 2 (4:11 pm): As the new JLPGA money list shows, Jeon is the 4th player this season to join the 100 Million Yen Club.

1. Shinobu Moromizato ￥142.83M
2. Sakura Yokomine ￥127.50M
3. Chie Arimura ￥105.21M
4. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥105.12M
5. Yuko Mitsuka ￥69.40M
6. Ji-Hee Lee ￥60.34M
7. Miho Koga ￥58.12M
8. Bo-Bae Song ￥47.04M
9. Yukari Baba ￥46.47M
10. Yuko Saitoh ￥42.02M
11. Yuri Fudoh ￥38.88M
12. Eun-A Lim ￥38.11M
13. Akiko Fukushima ￥34.67M
14. Ayako Uehara ￥34.48M
15. Erina Hara ￥32.51M
16. Ai Miyazato ￥32.49M
17. Ah-Reum Hwang ￥32.43M
18. Miki Saiki ￥31.93M
19. Rui Kitada ￥30.33M
20. Nikki Campbell ￥29.84M
21. Momoko Ueda ￥28.51M
22. Rikako Morita ￥28.13M
23. Tamie Durdin ￥28.05M
24. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥26.32M
25. Midori Yoneyama ￥26.02M
26. Hiromi Mogi ￥25.96M
27. Na-Ri Lee ￥25.37M
28. Ji-Woo Lee ￥25.09M
29. Saiki Fujita ￥24.54M
30. Li-Ying Ye ￥24.13M
31. Mayu Hattori ￥23.51M
32. Kaori Aoyama ￥21.31M
33. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥20.53M
34. Akane Iijima ￥19.42M
35. So-Hee Kim ￥19.04M

Ai-sama's scheduled to play the next 2 weeks on the JLPGA, so let's see how high up the money list she and Momo-chan can climb before they return to the LPGA!]