Samantha Thavasa Ladies Sunday: Megumi Kido Seals 1st Win with Bogey-Free Final-9 32

Things were looking bad for 22-year-old Megumi Kido as she made the turn today at the Samantha Thavasa Ladies.  The golfer who had gone 66-66 in the 1st 2 rounds on the strength of a 35-hole bogey-free run had just double-bogeyed the 143-yard par-3 9th hole to drop back to -10 and into a tie with former world #1 Ji-Yai Shin (playing in the group ahead of her) and JLPGA legend Yuri Fudoh (one of her playing partners), who both fired bogey-free 33s on the front to chase her down.  1 shot behind her was her other playing partner, 2012 money-list leader Mi-Jeong Jeon, who had just birdied the 9th.  On top of that, Eun-Bi Jang had already posted a 66 to finish at -9.  She was in danger of going from a 4-shot lead with 18 to play to falling out of the top 10 if she didn't bounce back quickly--a big deal for someone who had made the top 50 on the JLPGA money list for the 1st time in 4 tries just last year, who was struggling to stay in the top 40 this season.

Then Fudoh and Jeon both birdied the 355-yard par-4 10th.  Kido responded with a birdie of her own.

Then Jeon birdied the 506-yard par-5 11th.  Kido matched it to stay 1-up on both golfers.

Then Jeon made her 4th birdie in a row on the 163-yard par-3.  Kido parred.

After everyone in the hunt parred the 372-yard par-4 13th, Kido started applying some pressure of her own with a birdie on the 394-yard par-4 14th.  And when 1st Shin and next Fudoh could only par the 524-yard par-5 15th and Jeon bogeyed it, a Kido par extended her lead to 2.

And that's where it stayed, with Kido adding a birdie on the 386-yard par-4 17th to get to -14, Shin and Jeon a birdie on the 367-yard par-4 18th and Fudoh a bogey to finish at -11, -12, and -10, respectively.  Yes, So-Hee Kim had earlier posted a bogey-free 66 to get to -11, but the big story was that Kido held off the best players in the field (besides Sakura Yokomine who finished at -6, Na Yeon Choi who settled for -5, and Chie Arimura who needed a 69 today to get to -4) on the strength of a bogey-free back-9 32.

Oh, and she moved 20 spots up the JLPGA money list from last week!

1. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥78.46M
2. Mayu Hattori ￥51.62M
3. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥51.53M
4. Ritsuko Ryu ￥50.18M
5. Miki Saiki ￥49.39M
6. Chie Arimura ￥48.12M
7. Ji-Hee Lee ￥45.19M
8. Sakura Yokomine ￥36.54M
9. Bo-Mee Lee ￥36.23M
10. Rikako Morita ￥32.57M
11. Inbee Park ￥29.62M
12. Hiromi Mogi ￥28.33M
13. Soo-Yun Kang ￥27.67M
14. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥25.42M
15. Mihoko Iseri ￥25.04M
16. Shanshan Feng ￥24.28M
17. Kaori Ohe ￥22.71M
18. Megumi Kido ￥21.97M
19. Hyun-Ju Shin ￥21.12M
20. Yuki Ichinose ￥18.94M
21. Ji-Yai Shin ￥17.78M
22. Erina Hara ￥17.58M
23. Yuri Fudoh ￥16.84M
24. Esther Lee ￥16.64M
25. Airi Saitoh ￥16.37M
26. Ayako Uehara ￥16.34M
27. Yukari Baba ￥15.92M
28. Bo-Bae Song ￥15.63M
29. Akane Iijima ￥15.31M
30. Teresa Lu ￥14.62M
31. Yumiko Yoshida ￥14.62M
32. So-Hee Kim ￥14.62M
33. Erika Kikuchi ￥14.03M
34. Na-Ri Lee￥13.93M
35. Shinobu Moromizato ￥13.24M
36. Rui Kitada ￥13.13M
37. Miki Sakai ￥12.72M
38. Yeo-Jin Kang ￥12.30M
39. Yuko Fukuda ￥11.57M
40. Young Kim￥10.86M
41. Na-Ri Kim ￥10.71M
42. Harukyo Nomura ￥10.08M
43. Kumiko Kaneda ￥9.65M
44. Da-Ye Na ￥9.42M
45. Eun-Bi Jang ￥9.38M
46. Asako Fujimoto￥8.81M
47. Natsu Nagai ￥8.58M
48. Junko Omote￥7.81M
49. Shiho Toyonaga ￥7.77M
50. Li-Ying Ye ￥7.68M

With the top JLPGA golfers headed over to the Evian Masters this coming week, the tour won't return to action until the following week at the Meiji Cup.  So Megumi Kido has a long time to celebrate her 1st JLPGA win!