Shanshan Feng fired a bogey-free 65 in the final round of the Mizuno Classic to catch 2nd-round leader Momoko Ueda at -16 and force a playoff. I'll have more when I know more!
[Update 1 (2:07 am - 1 "fall back" hour): While I wait for the results to be posted online, it's worth noting that a bogey on the 15th hole kept Na Yeon Choi from tying Sakura Yokomine's tournament record at Kintetsu Kashikojima Country Club--and, more important, kept her 1 shot out of the playoff. Failing to birdie either par 5 on the back also played a role, but she put on a great charge with birdies on her final 2 holes. A few minutes later, Kyeong Bae matched Choi's 64 from the last group off the back, moving from the cellar to the middle of the pack, and 1-upping Christel Boeljon, who dropped a 65 on the field from the 1st group off the front. Stacy Lewis also made an early move with yet another bogey-free 65, but it seems those early charges just woke Ueda up. After starting out with a birdie and 1 bogey in her 1st 7 holes, she got it to -15 with birdies on 9 and 10. But even though she stalled there on the back, when Feng got it to -16 on the par-3 17th in the group ahead of her, Ueda responded with a clutch birdie on the par-5 16th. Those birdies helped make moot Catriona Matthew's great start--she birdied 6 of her 1st 10 holes to get to -14--but like Sakura Yokomine (who bogeyed her last 2 holes in a row after getting to -14 on the 13th) and Mina Harigae (whose bogeys on the last holes on each side undermined her 4 birdie run over a 5-hole stretch midway through the back that almost brought her into contention), Matthew bogeyed the last hole to cap off a birdieless stretch run over her last 8 holes.]
[Update 2 (1:09 am): Ueda won the playoff! Congrats to Momo-chan for her 1st win as an LPGA member and 2nd at this event!]
[Update 3 (10:15 am): Asian Golf Daily has the details on the playoff. Straight from LPGA.com.]
[Update 4 (1:04 pm): Here are the final results from the final round (in Japanese). Ueda's out-of-nowhere win brings her from #44 to #23 on the JLPGA money list, while Ji-Yai Shin's Sunday 66 and top-10 finish gets her barely into the top 50 and Sun-Ju Ahn's closing 68 helps her maintain and even extend her lead on some of her nearest chasers:
1. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥116.05M
2. Chie Arimura ￥83.27M
3. Sakura Yokomine ￥76.87M
4. Ji-Hee Lee ￥74.01M
5. Yukari Baba ￥66.14M
6. Miki Saiki ￥62.14M
7. Shanshan Feng ￥58.75M
8. Ritsuko Ryu ￥56.22M
9. Yuri Fudoh ￥55.84M
10. Shiho Oyama ￥50.50M
11. Mayu Hattori ￥44.82M
12. Ayako Uehara ￥44.53M
13. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥41.57M
14. Saiki Fujita ￥39.06M
15. Kumiko Kaneda ￥38.07M
16. Hiromi Mogi ￥35.97M
17. Rikako Morita ￥35.59M
18. Rui Kitada ￥35.27M
19. Na-Ri Kim ￥33.30M
20. Asako Fujimoto ￥31.94M
21. Bo-Bae Song ￥31.72M
22. Junko Omote ￥31.11M
23. Momoko Ueda ￥29.93M
24. Yuko Mitsuka ￥29.37M
25. Ji-Woo Lee ￥28.09M
26. Li-Ying Ye ￥26.87M
27. Akane Iijima ￥25.87M
28. Na-Ri Lee ￥25.48M
29. Inbee Park ￥25.11M
30. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥24.87M
31. Ah-Reum Hwang ￥24.41M
32. Teresa Lu ￥23.83M
33. Esther Lee ￥22.95M
34. Akiko Fukushima ￥22.63M
35. Soo-Yun Kang ￥21.90M
36. Eun-A Lim ￥21.79M
37. Kaori Aoyama ￥21.70M
38. Eun-Bi Jang ￥21.05M
39. Young Kim ￥20.82M
40. Shinobu Moromizato ￥17.88M
41. Bo-Mee Lee ￥17.62M
42. Yumiko Yoshida ￥17.11M
43. Nikki Campbell ￥16.58M
44. Tamie Durdin ￥15.98M
45. Megumi Kido ￥15.45M
46. Nachiyo Ohtani ￥15.04M
47. Miho Koga ￥14.87M
48. Ji-Yai Shin ￥14.48M
49. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥14.22M
50. So-Hee Kim ￥13.81M
Looks like Ueda, Feng, Shiho Oyama, and Inbee Park are playing in the Ito-En Ladies next week, along with former LPGAers Na-Ri Kim, Teresa Lu, Shinobu Moromizato, Young Kim, Soo-Yun Kang, and Tamie Durdin. Ai Miyazato is #68 on the money list, so it'll be interesting to see if the JLPGA forces her to play in Q-School (which somewhere Meena Lee and Hee Young Park will have to go if they want to maintain their dual memberships in 2012). This coming week, Ai-sama goes to Mexico for the Lorena Ochoa Invitational, still over $55K shy of the $1M mark on the LPGA money list. Here's hoping she bounces back from a tough week quickly!]
[Update 5 (6:44 pm): bangkokbobby found some great photos and video--very dramatic and emotional win!]
5 comments:
Any idea why Cristina Kim got into the titleholders ahead of Teresa Lu.
Lu is listed as an LPGA member.
My guess is she's let the LPGA know she plans to let her membership expire. She's played 20+ events in Japan and I believe none in the U.S.
According to her stats sheet (http://www.lpga.com/Greensheet.aspx?pid=5426&year=2011) She's made two other starts: the Kraft Nabisco and the US Women's Open, missing the cut in both. It also lists her winnings from the Mizuno as "unofficial". So I guess that resolves any question of her status.
Kevin
Ah, forgot about those missed cuts in majors! Thanks, Kevin!
I'm guessing that since she entered this field via her JLPGA status, that the LPGA would deem her similar to a Sponsors Invite, and their earnings never count toward official money. In which case, she'd only have gotten in by winning the event a la So Yeon Ryu.
Also, she could've easily have just turned it down, with a JLPGA event at the same time, and the Ricoh Cup the week after...
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