Salonpas Cup Thursday: Yuri Fudoh Alone Under 70 in JLPGA's 1st Major

Yuri Fudoh's hot start to the 2011 JLPGA season showed no signs of cooling today in Ibaraki prefecture at the Salonpas Cup, where she was the only player in the field to break 70 and the only player in the top 15 to make only 1 bogey. Her 69 leaves her with a 1-shot lead on Momoko Ueda (who made 7 birdies and 5 bogeys!), Hee Young Park (6/4!), Bo-Mee Lee (5/3), and Teresa Lu (4/2), a 2-shot lead on Sun-Ju Ahn, Miki Saiki, and Nikki Campbell, and a 3-shot lead on Mika Miyazato and Ayako Uehara, among others.

Here are the 1st-round results from leaders and notables:

1st/-3 Yuri Fudoh (69)
T2/-2 Momoko Ueda, Hee Young Park, Teresa Lu, Bo-Mee Lee, Mayu Hattori (70)
T7/-1 Sun-Ju Ahn, Miki Saiki, Nikki Campbell, Yumiko Yoshida, Kaori Yamamoto (71)

T12/E Mika Miyazato, Ayako Uehara, Ji-Woo Lee, Li-Ying Ye, So-Hee Kim, Megumi Kido (72)
T19/+1 Morgan Pressel, Akiko Fukushima, Meena Lee, Yuko Mitsuka, Rui Kitada, Erina Hara, Yuki Ichinose, Julie Lu, Tao-Li Yang (73)
T30/+2 Sakura Yokomine, Inbee Park, Bo-Bae Song, Ritsuko Ryu, Mika Takushima, Lala Anai (74)
T41/+3 Chie Arimura, Ji-Hee Lee, Shiho Oyama, Kumiko Kaneda, Na-Ri Kim, Tamie Durdin, Akane Iijima, Mie Nakata, Hyun-Ju Shin, Maiko Wakabayashi, Na-Ri Lee, Kaori Aoyama, Miki Sakai, Ji-Na Lim, Esther Lee (75)
T63/+4 Ai Miyazato, Shinobu Moromizato, Miho Koga, He-Yong Choi, Soo-Yun Kang, Hiromi Mogi, Rikako Morita, Kaori Ohe, Yuki Sakurai, Onnarin Sattayabanphot (76)
T78/+5 Na Yeon Choi, Yikari Baba, Saiki Fujita, Asako Fujimoto, Yun-Jye Wei, Miki Uehara (77)
T92/+6 Mi-Jeong Jeon, Ah-Reum Hwang, Erika Kikuchi (78)
T103/+7 Lee-Anne Pace, Pei-Ying Tsai (79)

As you can see, lots of big-name players had a lot of trouble today. Fudoh absolutely spanked playing partners Ai Miyazato (3 birdies, 5 bogeys, and a double) and Na Yeon Choi (1 birdie, 4 bogeys, and a double). Defending champion Morgan Pressel started on the back with a birdie-less 39, birdied 3 of her 1st 5 holes on the front, but bogeyed the par-4 9th to end her round. Sakura Yokomine bogeyed 3 of her 1st 4 holes on the back before playing her last 14 in -1 and bogey-free. Akiko Fukishima started on the back with a birdie-less 39, made up for it with a birdie on the par-4 1st and an eagle on the par-4 2nd, but could only go +1 over her last 7 holes. Chie Arimura sprinkled 3 birdies, 2 bogeys, and 2 doubles liberally around the course.

Lesser-known players outside Japan also rode the roller coaster. Like Fukushima, Maiko Wakabayashi eagled the 2nd, but she offset it with 2 doubles and a bogey the rest of the way. Rikako Morita eagled the par-5 17th but didn't make a birdie all day and suffered 4 bogeys and a double to boot. Li-Ying Ye started with 2 pars, 2 birdies, and an eagle, but made 3 bogeys in a row to close out the front, then added 2 bogeys and a birdie on the back.

4 rounds is a lot of golf, but for many notables tomorrow is do or die day. Let's see how they respond!