Sunday, July 31, 2011

Ricoh Women's British Open Saturday: Ya Ni Tseng's 66 Brings Her Within 2 of Caroline Masson

It was moving backwards day for most of the field yesterday at the Ricoh Women's British Open, but 2nd-round leader Caroline Masson, world #1 Ya Ni Tseng, Scotland's own Catriona Matthew, and China's only professional golfer on the LPGA Shanshan Feng must not have gotten the memo, as they were the only golfers to go below 69 on a day when 1st-round leader Meena Lee shot an 80, Brittany Lincicome, Hee Young Park, and Caroline Hedwall 76s, and the likes of Morgan Pressel, Eun-Hee Ji, and Tiffany Joh 75s--and Se Ri Pak and Inbee Park followed up Friday's 64s with 73s. Feng's 67 and Matthew's 68 were bogey-free, while Masson's 68 was marred only by opening and closing bogeys, but the round of the day belonged to Tseng, who fired a bogey-free 30 on the back, punctuated by a 50-foot eagle putt on the par-5 14th, to get to -13 for the week, only 2 shots behind Masson. The LET super soph, however, played another great round of golf, breaking 70 for the 3rd-straight time, taking only 29 putts while hitting 15 greens in regulation, and getting up and down from greenside bunkers 2 of 3 times. If she can put up those kind of numbers for the 4th day in a row today, she could well hold off a charging Tseng. With nobody else within 5 shots of the lead, the final round is likely to be nearly a match-play situation, unless the weather turns ugly and somebody near the top of the leaderboard plays great anyway.

As I missed the beginning and end of ESPN's coverage due to The Constructivist Family Futures Tour Road Trip (on which more soon), I don't have too much else to add. I'm going to miss the final-round WBO coverage entirely and will be driving back to Hamburg in the evening, so I'll be staying offline and firing up the DVR once the girls are asleep at home. Feel free to let me know what I missed in comments!

[Update 1 (3:18 am): Here are the final-round pairings. Would love to follow Boeljon-Reid, Gal-Joh, Pettersen-Kerr, Wie-Seo, Stanford-Kim, Yang-Feng, and Creamer-Miyazato for a few holes each!]

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