Nichirei Ladies Saturday: Ji-Hee Lee and Miki Saiki Co-Lead, Sakura Yokomine and Sun-Ju Ahn in the Hunt

Ji-Hee Lee and Miki Saiki continued to match cards in the Nichirei Ladies in Chiba as they each posted 5-birdie 69s to open up a 2-shot lead on Sakura Yokomine and So-Hee Kim and a 3-shot lead on Sun-Ju Ahn and Junko Omote. Chie Arimira, who's heading to Pittsford for the Wegmans LPGA Championship next week, used a 5-birdie 68 to join Inbee Park (who's also making the long flight back to the LPGA after this event) and Bo-Mee Lee 4 shots off the pace.

Here's how the leaders and notables stand heading into the final round:

T1/-7 Ji-Hee Lee (68-69), Miki Saiki (68-69)
T3/-5 Sakura Yokomine (72-67), So-Hee Kim (70-69)
T5/-4 Junko Omote (72-68), Sun-Ju Ahn (71-69)
T7/-3 Chie Arimura (73-68), Inbee Park (72-69), Ayako Uehara (72-69), Mi-Jeong Jeon (71-70), Shiho Oyama (71-70), Eun-Bi Jang (71-70), Shiho Toyonaga (71-70), Bo-Mee Lee (70-71), Na-Ri Lee (70-71), Young Kim (69-72)

T17/-2 Yuri Fudoh (72-70), Rikako Morita (72-70), Yun-Jye Wei (72-70), Kaori Ohe (72-70), Esther Lee (70-72)
T24/-1 Ritsuko Ryu (74-69), Akane Iijima (73-70), Teresa Lu (72-71), Asako Fujimoto (72-71)
T35/E Hyun-Ju Shin (76-68), Rui Kitada (76-68), Mayu Hattori (73-71), Yuko Mitsuka (72-72), Hiromi Mogi (71-73), Na-Ri Kim (71-73)
T41/+1 Yuki Ichinose (75-70), Nikki Campbell (74-71), Lala Anai (74-71), Soo-Yun Kang (73-72), Onnarin Sattayabanphot (72-73), Erika Kikuchi (72-73)

MC: Eun-A Lim (78-68), Akiko Fukushima (75-71), Tamie Durdin (75-71), Yumiko Yoshida (75-71), Miki Sakai (75-71), Miho Mori [a] (75-71), Miho Koga (74-72), Li-Ying Ye (74-72), Yukari Baba (73-73), Ji-Woo Lee (73-73), Mie Nakata (71-75), Maiko Wakabayashi (76-71), Kumiko Kaneda (75-72), Kaori Aoyama (74-73), Ah-Reum Hwang (72-75), Julie Lu (74-74), Saiki Fujita (73-75), Mika Takushima (77-71), Harukyo Nomura (76-72), Jee-Hae Bae (76-72), Megumi Kido (74-75), Erina Hara (76-74), Pei-Ying Tsai (77-75), Ji-Na Lim (78-76), Miki Uehara (77-77), Shinobu Moromizato (79-78)

As you can see, lots of big names missed the cut (a longer list than in my 1st-round post, as I didn't have time to check the Japanese names I didn't know by sight). But with 23 players still within 5 shots of the lead, anything can happen in the final round.