Yonex Ladies Sunday: Hiromi Mogi Beats Ji-Hee Lee with Walkoff Birdie

It was a war of attrition in today's final round of the Yonex Ladies, but in the end, the golfer who shot the round of the day, Hiromi Mogi, won the tournament with a birdie on the final hole, a 478-yard par 5.

Mogi's 5th career JLPGA victory was fueled by a bogey-free 33 on her final 9 and aided by the collapses of most of her competitors. Miki Sakai, who had to go to Q-School to keep her card for this season, was -5 after eagling the 373-yard par-4 8th hole, but she proceeded to double the 417-yard par-4 9th and shoot a birdieless 39 on the back. Sakura Yokomine, who started the day 1 off the lead, was still at -4 through 5 holes, but doubled the 513-yard par-5 6th and followed it up with a bogey on the 8th. It was a bogey on the 9th and a double on the 363-yard par-4 12th that derailed defending champion Mi-Jeong Jeon; she, too, had been at -4. In the end, only 2nd-round leader Ji-Hee Lee was in the hunt, despite stumbling out of the gates with a birdieless 38 to drop to -3. She fought back to -4 with a birdie on the 472-yard par-5 13th, then bounced back from a bogey on the 167-yard par-3 16th with a clutch birdie on the 403-yard par-4 17th. But Mogi applied pressure to her from 1 group ahead of her with a walkoff birdie and when Lee failed to match it, the tournament was Mogi's.

Here's how the leaders and notables ended up:

1st/-5 Hiromi Mogi (70-71-70)
2nd/-4 Ji-Hee Lee (69-70-73)
T3/-3 So-Hee Kim (72-70-71), Ayako Uehara (71-71-71)
5th/-2 Sakura Yokomine (69-71-74)
T6/-1 Eun-Bi Jang (74-69-72), Mi-Jeong Jeon (72-70-73), Eun-A Lim (72-70-73)
T9/E Akane Iijima (74-69-73), Ritsuko Ryu (69-72-75), Miki Sakai (71-69-76)

T12/+1 Inbee Park (68-75-74), Hyun-Ju Shin (70-72-75)
T14/+2 Li-Ying Ye (72-73-73), Yuki Ichinose (71-73-74), Yukari Baba (69-73-76)
T20/+4 Kumiko Kaneda (76-72-72), Young Kim (76-69-75), Miki Saiki (71-73-76)
T23/+5 Na-Ri Lee (79-69-73), Kaori Aoyama (70-74-77), Rui Kitada (74-69-78)
T26/+6 Mie Nakata (75-72-75), Shiho Oyama (78-68-76), Asako Fujimoto (73-73-76)
T31/+7 Miho Koga (76-74-73)
T34/+8 Rui Yokomine (72-77-75), Miki Uehara (73-75-76), Esther Lee (74-73-77)
T37/+9 Yun-Jye Wei (73-76-76)
T40/+10 Yumiko Yoshida (77-72-77), Erika Kikuchi (72-77-77), Julie Lu (73-73-80)
T48/+11 Mayu Hattori (78-71-78), Megumi Kido (73-75-79)
T50/+12 Maiko Wakabayashi (77-73-78), Mika Takushima (74-75-79), Yuri Fudoh (75-71-82)
T55/+13 Erina Hara (74-75-80)
T58/+14 Teresa Lu (74-76-80), Rikako Morita (77-71-82)

Note how high the scoring was--I wonder if that Supertyphoon that hit Okinawa affected the weather in Niigata? In any case, here's who's in the JLPGA Top 40:

1. Miki Saiki ￥38.55M
2. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥32.42M
3. Yuri Fudoh ￥30.10M
4. Hiromi Mogi ￥21.77M
5. Inbee Park ￥21.51M
6. Ji-Hee Lee ￥20.91M
7. Kumiko Kaneda ￥19.58M
8. Sakura Yokomine ￥19.49M
9. Rui Kitada ￥17.44M
10. Yukari Baba ￥14.56M
11. Momoko Ueda ￥13.77M
12. Teresa Lu ￥11.99M
13. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥11.64M
14. Ji-Woo Lee ￥11.06M
15. Chie Arimura ￥10.99M
16. Ji-Yai Shin ￥10.67M
17. Saiki Fujita ￥10.01M
18. Mayu Hattori ￥9.22M
19. Bo-Bae Song ￥8.94M
20. Kaori Aoyama ￥8.67M
21. Ritsuko Ryu ￥8.34M
22. Ayako Uehara ￥7.67M
23. Bo-Mee Lee ￥7.49M
24. Yumiko Yoshida ￥7.37M
25. Young Kim ￥7.29M
26. Rikako Morita ￥7.20M
27. Mie Nakata ￥6.87M
28. Megumi Kido ￥6.75M
29. Shinobu Moromizato ￥6.46M
30. Shiho Oyama ￥6.23M
31. Akiko Fukushima ￥6.09M
32. Akane Iijima ￥5.98M
33. Asako Fujimoto ￥5.93M
34. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥5.78M
35. So-Hee Kim ￥5.76M
36. Ji-Na Lim ￥4.79M
37. Na-Ri Lee ￥4.70M
38. Yuki Ichinose ￥4.66M
39. Na-Ri Kim ￥4.65M
40. Miki Sakai ￥4.49M

Next up is the Resort Trust Ladies, in which the only newcomer to the JLPGA is Soo-Yun Kang. Everyone with dual LPGA-JLPGA membership is either already in or heading to the States, it seems, for the LPGA's stretch run of early-summer fireworks.