Hisako Higuchi IDC Otsuka Kagu Ladies Sunday: Mi-Jeong Jeon Prevails, with a Little Help from Chie Arimura

The showdown at the Hisako Higuchi IDC Otsuka Kagu Ladies between Mi-Jeong Jeon and Chie Arimura that I envisioned yesterday came to pass today, and it all hinged on a late bogey by Arimura. But she did well to give herself a chance to win, given how well Jeon and Michie Ohba played on the front.

After an indifferent front herself, Arimura was stalled at -10, 2 shots behind Jeon, who had birdied 4 of her previous 5 holes, along with Ohba, who had birdied 3 of her 1st 6 to beat Jeon to the -12 mark. But Ohba would par out from the 7th hole on, and Jeon would manage only 1 more birdie, on the par-4 13th, the rest of the way. With birdies on the long par 4 10th, the short par 4 13th, and the medium par 4 14th, Arimura caught Jeon and passed Ohba. But it was the 403-yard 17th that was her Waterloo, as she bogeyed it to fall back into a tie for 2nd with Ohba. Both players had a chance to force a playoff with Jeon, but could only manage pars on the short par 5 18th, as the winner had in the group before them. Ohba ended up being the only player in the field to break 70 all 3 rounds, but her birdie drought denied her her 1st win since 2001.

Here are the final results for the leaders and notables:

1st/-13 Mi-Jeon Jeong (65-71-67)
T2/-12 Michie Ohba (69-66-69), Chie Arimura (69-65-70)
T4/-10 Bo-Bae Song (69-70-67), Eun-Hye Lee (72-66-68), Akane Iijima (67-71-68), Mayu Hattori (68-68-70)
T8/-9 Yuko Mitsuka (71-68-68), Junko Omote (70-69-68)
T10/-8 Yuka Shiroto (69-70-69), Ji-Hee Lee (71-67-70)

T12/-7 Rui Kitada (71-70-68), Hiromi Mogi (69-68-72)
T14/-6 Ah-Reum Hwang (69-71-70), Tamie Durdin (68-70-72), Akiko Fukushima (70-67-73)
T17/-5 Shinobu Moromizato (70-70-71)
T19/-4 Julie Lu (69-72-71), Yun-Jye Wei (67-71-74), Maiko Wakabayashi (65-74-73)
T22/-3 Sakura Yokomine (73-70-70)
T26/-2 Miki Saiki (72-73-69), Yukari Baba (69-74-71)
T30/-1 Erina Hara (73-72-70), Sakurako Mori (72-73-70), Na-Ri Lee (72-71-72), Kumiko Kaneda (72-71-72), Yumiko Yoshida (71-71-73), Hyun-Ju Shin (71-70-74)
T38/E So-Hee Kim (73-72-71), Ayako Uehara (75-68-73)
T43/+1 Mie Nakata (71-73-73), Yuko Saitoh (71-70-76)
52nd/+6 Nikki Campbell (73-69-80)

With her win, Jeon joins Arimura and Sakura Yokomine as the only 4-time winners on the JLPGA in 2009, and pulls within 33 million yen of 6-time winner Shinobu Moromizato on the money list.

1. Shinobu Moromizato ￥152.09M
2. Sakura Yokomine ￥131.32M
3. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥119.28M
4. Chie Arimura ￥118.04M
5. Yuko Mitsuka ￥81.04M
6. Ji-Hee Lee ￥67.85M
7. Miho Koga ￥61.88M
8. Yukari Baba ￥54.60M
9. Bo-Bae Song ￥51.44M
10. Akiko Fukushima ￥45.44M
11. Nikki Campbell ￥44.52M
12. Eun-A Lim ￥43.63M
13. Yuko Saitoh ￥42.91M
14. Yuri Fudoh ￥40.42M
15. Ai Miyazato ￥39.53M
16. Miki Saiki ￥39.52M
17. Ayako Uehara ￥38.28M
18. Ah-Reum Hwang ￥35.69M
19. Erina Hara ￥33.59M
20. Ji-Yai Shin ￥33.42M
21. Tamie Durdin ￥32.77M
22. Rui Kitada ￥32.08M
23. Momoko Ueda ￥30.30M
24. Hiromi Mogi ￥29.91M
25. Rikako Morita ￥29.76M
26. Mayu Hattori ￥29.03M
27. Akane Iijima ￥29.02M
28. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥27.09M
29. Midori Yoneyama ￥26.54M
30. Na-Ri Lee ￥25.89M
31. Ji-Woo Lee ￥25.53M
32. Saiki Fujita ￥25.14M
33. Michie Ohba ￥24.39M
34. Li-Ying Ye ￥24.13M
34. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥22.51M
36. Kaori Aoyama ￥21.31M
37. So-Hee Kim ￥19.76M
38. Julie Lu ￥17.86M
39. Hiromi Takesue ￥16.22M
40. Mie Nakata ￥16.20M

Only the top 50 on the JLPGA money list avoid their Q-School the 1st week of December. As we get closer to that date, I'll expand my translation to eventually include the top 50. The 2nd stage begins in a couple of days. The main drama there is who from among last year's top 10 on the KLPGA and between #51 and #90 on the 2008 LPGA money list will be teeing it up. More on that soon....