Daio Paper Elleair Ladies Sunday: Rikako Morita Eagles 17 for Win

When 3rd-round leader Rikako Morita double bogeyed the par-5 9th to fall back to -10 for the week at the Daio Paper Elleair Ladies, she suffered a 3-shot swing on playing partners Ji-Hee Lee and Momoko Ueda, who all of a sudden led her by 3 and 2 shots, respectively.  Meanwhile, Asako Fujimoto had fired a bogey-free 33 from the group ahead of them to get to -11, her playing partner Sakura Yokomine had birdied 3 of her last 6 holes on the front to catch Morita at -10, and, playing from several groups ahead, Mamiko Higa had birdied 5 of her 1st 11 holes to join them.

Morita responded with birdies on 11 and 12 to catch Lee and Ueda (who bogeyed 10), but Higa birdied 13 and 15 to join them at -12 and Fujimoto maintained her 1-shot lead on them with birdies on 11 and 13.  Meanwhile, Yukari Baba made 5 birdies in an 8-hole stretch in the middle of her round to also get to -12.

But then Fujimoto and Morita separated themselves from the field.  First Baba, then Ueda bogeyed 14 to drop to -11.  Higa birdied the par-5 17th to get to -13, but bogeyed the final hole to finish the tournament at -12 after a final-round 66.  Fujimoto birdied 17 to get to -14, but Morita birdied the par-3 16th to remain only 1 shot back.  As Fujimoto was parring 18 for a 66 of her own, Morita struck with an eagle on 17 that gave her the lead.  And when she parred it, her bogey-free 31 on the back had earned her her 4th title of the season and 1st since mid-June.  And it also moved her back to the top of the JLPGA money list.

More soon!

[Update 1 (12:22 pm):  Here's how the money list now looks:

1. Rikako Morita ￥125.32M
2. Sakura Yokomine ￥122.51M
3. Yumiko Yoshida ￥86.64M
4. Miki Saiki ￥83.10M
5. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥81.11M
6. Teresa Lu ￥80.29M
7. Mamiko Higa ￥78.11M
8. Bo-Mee Lee ￥72.84M
9. Natsuka Hori ￥64.74M

10. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥61.55M

11. Na-Ri Lee ￥58.34M

12. Yuki Ichinose ￥55.91M

13. Ritsuko Ryu ￥54.34M

14. Asako Fujimoto ￥51.22M

15. Yukari Baba ￥48.77M

16. Da-Ye Na ￥48.14M

17. Shiho Oyama ￥46.86M

18. Onnarin Sattayabanphot ￥46.28M

19. Erika Kikuchi ￥45.60M

20. Misuzu Narita ￥45.46M

21. Soo-Yun Kang ￥43.80M

22. Junko Omote ￥43.26M

23. Kumiko Kaneda ￥42.72M

24. Mayu Hattori ￥41.79M

25. Esther Lee ￥40.73M

26. Ji-Hee Lee ￥39.49M

27. Na-Ri Kim ￥39.48M

28. Hiromi Mogi ￥36.88M

29. Harukyo Nomura ￥35.97M

30. Yuri Fudoh ￥35.57M

31. Miki Sakai ￥35.36M

32. Erina Hara ￥33.59M

33. Rui Kitada ￥31.78M

34. Maiko Wakabayashi ￥31.15M

35. Kaori Ohe ￥28.24M

36. Lala Anai ￥27.89M

37. Kaori Nakamura ￥26.18M

38. Megumi Kido ￥25.58M

39. Eun-Bi Jang ￥25.27M

40. Young Kim ￥24.76M

41. Yuko Fukuda ￥24.40M

42. Ah-Reum Hwang ￥23.23M

43. Shanshan Feng ￥23.06M

44. Akane Iijima ￥22.40M

45. Phoebe Yao ￥22.09M

46. Ayaka Watanabe ￥20.75M

47. Momoko Ueda ￥19.26M

48. Kaori Aoyama ￥19.25M

49. Yuki Sakurai ￥18.94M

50. Saiki Fujita ￥17.83M

As you can see, Ueda's winnings did count toward her season total and Fujita finished just high enough (-3, T26) today to pass Ayako Uehara and Yun-Jye Wei for the last automatic spot for 2014 membership on the JLPGA.]