When Shanshan Feng made her 1st bogey of the week on her 45th hole in the Miyagi TV Cup Dunlop Ladies Open, it dropped her back to -1 for the day and -5 for the tournament and left her 3 shots behind JLPGA legend and 2nd-round leader Yuri Fudoh, 1 shot behind resurgent veteran Shiho Oyama, tied with fellow 1-time winner Kumiko Kaneda, and barely ahead of a host of talented golfers, including veteran Ji-Hee Lee and the winless and suddenly imploding Asako Fujimoto and Chiharu Tsunekawa at -4, a similarly self-destructing Kumiko Kaneda as well as a charging Yukari Baba and Mayu Hattori at -3, and non-JLPGA member and 1st-round co-leader Mika Miyazato at -2 (who was beginning to recover from 4 bogeys made in her 1st 7 holes).
But Feng didn't lose patience on the back 9 and slowly made up ground on Fudoh: pars on 10 and 11 cut the lead to 2, thanks to a Fudoh bogey on 9; a birdie on the 386-yard par-4 12th cut it to 1; and a string of 4 pars in a row enabled her to pull even with Fudoh, as the Billion Yen Woman bogeyed the 154-yard par-3 15th to fall back to -6. And what of Oyama? Playing in the final group with Fudoh, she, too, made a pair of bogeys, on two medium-length par 4s, the 13th and the 16th, to fall 2 shots behind the co-leaders. By the time Feng reached the 17th tee, everyone else had fallen even further off the pace: Kaneda followed up her bogey-free 33 on the front with a double on the 10 and killed her chances with back-to-back bogeys later on the back; Fujimoto fell apart by playing her last 10 holes birdieless and +4; a slew of bogeys on the back ended Baba's and Hattori's charges; and Feng's playing partners stalled, with Lee parring out to end the day at -4--a mark Tsunekawa would soon match from the final group--while Miyazato could only join Kaneda and a late-charging Junko Omote at -3 by following up her opening 40 with a bogey-free 34.
So in the end it came down to the final 2 holes. And when Feng birdied both the medium-length holes as Oyama could only manage one on the penultimate par 4 and Fudoh one on the final par 5, well, Shanshan had won her 2nd JLPGA title in only her 6th start as a member. Here's how the final leaderboard looked:
1st/-8 Shanshan Feng (70-70-68)
2nd/-7 Yuri Fudoh (68-69-72)
3rd/-5 Shiho Oyama (69-69-73)
T4/-4 Ji-Hee Lee (69-71-72), Chiharu Tsunekawa (68-70-74)
T6/-3 Junko Omote (72-71-70), Kumiko Kaneda (70-72-71), Mika Miyazato (68-71-74)
T9/-2 Ji-Woo Lee (72-69-73), Yukari Baba (70-71-73), Asako Fujimoto (70-71-73)
T12/-1 Mayu Hattori (71-73-71), Rikako Morita (75-67-73), Hiromi Mogi (71-71-73), Esther Lee (72-69-74)
T17/E Teresa Lu (71-74-71), Na-Ri Lee (73-71-72), Kaori Aoyama (71-71-74), Bo-Bae Song (70-71-75)
T23/+1 Sakura Yokomine (73-71-73), Megumi Kido (70-71-76)
T26/+2 Erina Hara (73-73-72), Akane Iijima (71-75-72), Ai Miyazato (73-72-73), Rui Kitada (72-72-74), Yuki Ichinose (70-74-74), Saiki Fujita (72-70-76)
T35/+3 Erina Yamato (76-71-72), Shinobu Moromizato (70-75-74), Mika Takushima (72-72-75), Eun-A Lim (70-72-77)
T40/+4 Sakurako Mori (73-73-74)
T42/+5 Hee Young Park (71-74-76), Mina Nakayama (71-74-76)
47th/+6 Chie Arimura (73-72-77)
MC: Kaori Ohe (77-71), Ayako Uehara (75-73), Miki Saiki (74-75), Inbee Park (77-72), Yuko Mitsuka (78-72), Eun-Bi Jang (76-74), Momoko Ueda (75-75), Maiko Wakabayashi (75-75), Erika Kikuchi (75-75), Yumiko Yoshida (78-73), Rui Yokomine (75-76), Yun-Jye Wei (71-80), Serena Aoki (80-72), Lala Anai (79-73), Miki Sakai (78-74), Kotono Kozuna (76-76), Miki Uehara (76-77), Aiko Ueno (77-77), Ah-Reum Hwang (80-75), Tao-Li Yang (76-80), Miho Koga (80-77)
As you can see, LPGAers and ex-LPGAers for the most part didn't fare nearly so well as Feng, Park, and even Mikan, nor did the players at the top of the JLPGA money list (besides Lee) who had a real chance to make a move on the idle Sun-Ju Ahn:
1. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥72.55M
2. Sakura Yokomine ￥68.23M
3. Chie Arimura ￥63.93M
4. Ji-Hee Lee ￥62.62M
5. Miki Saiki ￥60.50M
6. Yuri Fudoh ￥47.73M
7. Shanshan Feng ￥44.42M
8. Mayu Hattori ￥40.55M
9. Ritsuko Ryu ￥36.98M
10. Kumiko Kaneda ￥34.46M
11. Hiromi Mogi ￥33.45M
12. Ayako Uehara ￥31.17M
13. Rui Kitada ￥30.32M
14. Yuko Mitsuka ￥28.70M
15. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥28.55M
16. Junko Omote ￥28.36M
17. Bo-Bae Song ￥26.57M
18. Rikako Morita ￥25.36M
19. Na-Ri Kim ￥24.84M
20. Li-Ying Ye ￥24.74M
21. Inbee Park ￥24.33M
22. Yukari Baba ￥23.55M
23. Asako Fujimoto ￥22.58M
24. Ah-Reum Hwang ￥22.37M
25. Saiki Fujita ￥21.97M
26. Akiko Fukushima ￥19.83M
27. Eun-Bi Jang ￥19.77M
28. Soo-Yun Kang ￥18.96M
29. Shiho Oyama ￥18.86M
30. Ji-Woo Lee ￥17.70M
31. Teresa Lu ￥17.54M
32. Eun-A Lim ￥17.38M
33. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥17.26M
34. Esther Lee ￥16.62M
35. Shinobu Moromizato ￥16.41M
36. Bo-Mee Lee ￥16.34M
37. Kaori Aoyama ￥15.58M
38. Na-Ri Lee ￥14.85M
39. Momoko Ueda ￥14.79M
40. Nikki Campbell ￥14.03M
41. So-Hee Kim ￥13.81M
42. Young Kim ￥13.66M
43. Akane Iijima ￥13.27M
44. Yumiko Yoshida ￥12.99M
45. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥12.11M
46. Miho Koga ￥11.95M
47. Ji-Yai Shin ￥11.91M
48. Megumi Kido ￥11.75M
49. Yeo-Jin Kang ￥10.80M
50. Mie Nakata ￥10.25M
With Ai Miyazato and Hee Young Park still outside the top 75, time is running out on their bids to keep their JLPGA cards. Of the 2, though, only Ai-sama is entered in the Japan Women's Open for this week. Feng's win got her into the field of the biggest tournament of the year for women in Japan, but neither Hee Young nor Inbee Park could join her.
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