Today at the Resort Trust Ladies on the JLPGA, Chie Arimura fired her lowest round of competitive golf of the young season, a bogey-free 65 that put her 2 shots ahead of a half-dozen golfers, including Miki Saiki and Erina Hara. That's pretty surprising, on several levels: Arimura had blown up on the 1st day in 2 of her last 4 starts (an 82 where she missed the cut and a 77 last week); Hara's only made 3 cuts in 12 starts and had never broken 70 in 2010, but this round would have been even better if she hadn't bogeyed 2 of her last 3 holes; Saiki hasn't gotten a top 10 in 12 starts this season (although she did open with a 67 2 weeks ago).
What may be even more surprising, though, is Inbee Park's decision to jet over to Japan for this week and head back for the State Farm Classic next week--Momoko Ueda and Mika Miyazato had the right idea by playing last week on the JLPGA and making this week a travel/recovery week (although probably Ai Miyazato had the best strategy: take 2 weeks off to get ready for the LPGA's 5-week run of consecutive tournaments)! Park opened with a 73 that puts her in danger of missing the cut. Here's how the top 10 and other notables fared on a course that Young Kim's caddie was raving about (thanks to Tim Maitland for the report!):
1st/-7 Chie Arimura (65)
T2/-5 Miki Saiki, Erina Hara, Na-Ri Lee, Midori Yoneyama, Hiromi Takesue, Yoshimi Koda (67)
T8/-4 Rui Kitada, Ritsuko Ryu, Atsuko Satoh (68)
T11/-3 Young Kim, Asako Fujimoto, Na-Ri Kim (69)
T18/-2 Miho Koga, Sun-Ju Ahn, Bo-Bae Song, Eun-A Lim, Ji-Woo Lee, Yukari Baba, Mie Nakata (70)
T30/-1 Mayu Hattori, Hyun-Ju Shin, Ah-Reum Hwang, Yuki Ichinose (71)
T43/E Sakura Yokomine, Mi-Jeong Jeon, Shinobu Moromizato, Nikki Campbell, Yun-Jye Wei, Kaori Aoyama, Hiromi Mogi, Akane Iijima, Rikako Morita, Esther Lee, Yuko Saitoh (72)
T65/+1 Inbee Park, Maiko Wakabayashi, So-Hee Kim (73)
T75/+2 Saiki Fujita (74)
T85/+3 Li-Ying Ye (75)
That's a lot of ground that the JLPGA's big names have to make up on Arimura over the weekend. Let's see who makes a run at her!
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