Nichi-Iko Ladies Open Saturday: Bo-Bae Song Vaults into the Lead with a 66 of Her Own

Bo-Bae Song opened with a bogey-free 31 and held on for a 66 in the 2nd round of the Nichi-Iko Ladies Open that left her 1 shot in front of 1st-round co-leaders Ayako Uehara and Junko Omote, who rode the birdie train to double digits under par, Uehara by making 5 in a row as she made the turn and Omote by making 3 in a row early in the day. Ah-Reum Hwang matched the low round of the day and the tournament with a bogey-free 66, while Hyun-Ju Shin also went bogey-free to join her 3 shots off the pace. The only other player within 5 shots of the lead is JLPGA living legend Yuri Fudoh, who birdied 2 of her last 5 holes to get back to -6.

The rest of the JLPGAers at the top of the money list are either absent (Sun-Ju Ahn, Inbee Park, Chie Arimura, Teresa Lu, Momoko Ueda, Mi-Jeong Jeon, Bo-Mee Lee), well off the pace (Hiromi Mogi, Yukari Baba, Ritsuko Ryu), barely made the cut (Miki Saiki, Ji-Hee Lee, Sakura Yokomine, Kumiko Kaneda), or missed it (Rui Kitada, Saiki Fujita). So tomorrow's a great opportunity for some golfers lower down the money-list to make some pretty big moves. Let's see who can do it!

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

1st/-11 Bo-Bae Song (67-66)
T2/-10 Ayako Uehara (66-68), Junko Omote (66-68)
T4/-8 Ah-Reum Hwang (70-66), Hyun-Ju Shin (68-68)
6th/-6 Yuri Fudoh (68-70)
T7/-5 Akane Iijima (70-69), Yukari Baba (69-70)
T9/-4 Hiromi Mogi (69-71), Yeo-Jin Kang (69-71), Mayu Hattori (68-72)

T12/-3 Miki Uehara (73-68), Ritsuko Ryu (70-71)
T15/-2 Miho Koga (73-69), Maiko Wakabayashi (72-70), Megumi Kido (72-70), Mie Nakata (71-71), Ji-Na Lim (71-71), Erika Kikuchi (71-71), Soo-Yun Kang (70-72)
T23/-1 Yuko Mitsuka (74-69), Eun-A Lim (74-69), Esther Lee (73-70), Shiho Oyama (72-71), Kaori Aoyama (71-72), Kumiko Kaneda (70-73), Yumiko Yoshida (70-73), Miki Sakai (70-73), Ayu Komatsu (68-75)
T37/E Miki Saiki (72-72), Na-Ri Lee (71-73), Onnarin Sattayabanphot (71-73)
T45/+1 Yuki Ichinose (76-69), Ji-Woo Lee (75-70), Young Kim (74-71), Sakura Yokomine (73-72), Tao-Li Yang (73-72), Ji-Hee Lee (70-75), Kaori Ohe (70-75)

MC: Na-Ri Kim (77-69), Rikako Morita (74-72), Rui Kitada (73-73), So-Hee Kim (73-73), Saiki Fujita (72-74), Tamie Durdin (72-74), Asako Fujimoto (72-74), Eun-Bi Jang (72-75), Mika Takushima (78-70), Yun-Jye Wei (76-72), Nikki Campbell (75-73), Aoi Nagata (71-78), Yuki Sakurai (78-72), Pei-Ying Tsai (76-74), Lala Anai (73-78), Erina Hara (77-77)