Before 4 JLPGA tournaments were cancelled due to the ongoing effects of Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis, before this week's Nishijin Ladies Classic was renamed the East Earthquake Reconstruction Charity Classic, and right after Inbee Park won the 1st event of the 2011 season to follow up on her Ricoh Cup win to close out the 2010 season, the focus of many in the Japanese media--and seemingly, at the upper reaches of the JLPGA itself--was on the increasing success of international golfers in Japan. Well, it's looking like that "Korean Power Wave" is picking up right where it left off. Ji-Woo Lee fired a 7-birdie 66 to take a 2-shot lead on Ji-Hee Lee and Yukari Baba. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, eh? But take a look further down the leaderboard and you'll see what I mean:
1st/-6 Ji-Woo Lee (66)
T2/-4 Ji-Hee Lee, Yukari Baba (68)
T4/-2 Yuri Fudoh, Sun-Ju Ahn, Na-Ri Lee (70)
T7/-1 Ji-Yai Shin, Chie Arimura, Inbee Park, Teresa Lu, Megumi Shimokawa (71)
T12/E Rui Kitada, Li-Ying Ye, Pei-Ying Tsai (72)
T17/+1 Yuko Mitsuka, Bo-Bae Song, Mie Nakata, Asako Fujimoto, Yuki Ichinose, Ritsuko Ryu, Jae-Hee Bae (73)
T26/+2 Mi-Jeong Jeon, Shinobu Moromizato, Nikki Campbell, Tamie Durdin, Soo-Yun Kang, So-Hee Kim, Eun-A Lim, Maiko Wakabayashi, Kumiko Kaneda, Kaori Ohe, Mika Takushima (74)
T45/+3 Sakura Yokomine, Miho Koga, Akane Iijima, Saiki Fujita, Hiromi Mogi, Mayu Hattori, Hyun-Ju Shin, Rikako Morita, Miki Sakai, Julie Lu (75)
T59/+4 Akiko Fukushima, Na-Ri Kim, Kaori Aoyama (76)
T68/+5 Miki Saiki, Erina Hara, Hiromi Takesue, Yun-Jye Wei, Esther Lee, Yuki Sakurai (77)
T81/+6 Shiho Oyama, Young Kim, Riko Higashio (78)
T91/+7 Hee Young Park, Onnarin Sattayabanphot, Miki Uehara (79)
T97/+8 Ayako Uehara (80)
T100/+9 Momoko Ueda (81)
T106/+11 Ai-Yu Tu (83)
Just as big a story, however, is how much rust how many highly-ranked players have to scrape off. Round 2 has already begun in Japan, so let's see who among them can bounce back to make the cut or get into contention!
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