Samantha Thavasa Ladies Sunday: Misuzu Narita, 21, Beats Kotono Kozuma, 22, in Playoff for 3rd Win of 2014

22-year-old Kotono Kozuma fired a bogey-free 64 to finish the Samantha Thavasa Ladies at -16, but 21-year-old Misuzu Narita birdied 2 of her last 5 holes to force a playoff, which she won (in a way I have yet to discover).  It's Narita's 3rd win of 2014 and 5th in her short JLPGA career.  More details after I return from (hopefully) conquering Valley View in the final round of the Utica City Amateur!

[Update 1 (11:44 pm):  I had my 1st decent round of 2014 from Valley View's blue tees today, a 78 with 29 putts marred only by my butchering the Robert Trent Jones-design's 2 easy par 5s and missing a couple of 3-footers on the front (my back).  Then I watched Lydia Ko win at Highland Meadows, ate dinner with my folks, and drove back to Hamburg.  So I'm just now catching up on JLPGA blogging.  Let's see, the Yomiuri Shimbun notes only that Narita won on the 1st playoff hole.  The JLPGA site explains she did it with a birdie.]

[Update 2 (7/21/14, 12:01 am):  Here's what the tour's money list looks like as a result of Narita's impressive win:

1. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥81.37M
2. Bo-Mee Lee ￥67.68M
3. Misuzu Narita ￥66.11M
4. Miki Sakai ￥55.38M
5. Erina Hara ￥40.04M
6. Ji-Yai Shin ￥39.33M
7. Onnarin Sattayabanphot ￥37.84M
8. Ayaka Watanabe ￥37.23M
9. Teresa Lu ￥34.45M
10. Esther Lee ￥34.30M
11. Yuki Ichinose ￥31.61M
12. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥31.48M
13. Rikako Morita ￥29.74M
14. Ji-Hee Lee ￥27.65M

15. Phoebe Yao ￥26.57M
16. Lala Anai ￥26.41M
17. Ritsuko Ryu ￥26.23M
18. Na-Ri Lee ￥24.31M
19. Mayu Hattori ￥23.30M
20. Hikari Fujita ￥23.07M
21. Shiho Oyama ￥21.55M
22. Sakura Yokomine ￥20.58M
23. Shanshan Feng ￥20.04M
24. Yeon-Ju Jung ￥19.79M
25. Junko Omote ￥18.29M
26. Kaori Ohe ￥18.16M
27. Mami Fukuda ￥18.10M

28. Mamiko Higa ￥17.80M
29. Saiki Fujita ￥17.63M
30. Yukari Baba ￥17.53M
31. Momoko Ueda ￥16.97M
32. Rumi Yoshiba ￥16.90M
33. Akane Iijima ￥16.52M

34. Soo-Yun Kang ￥15.63M
35. Megumi Kido ￥15.59M
36. Kotono Kozuma ￥14.93M
37. Asako Fujimoto ￥14.91M
38. Yumiko Yoshida ￥14.69M
39. Na-Ri Kim ￥14.29M

40. Miki Saiki ￥13.46M

Next up is a new event on the JLPGA, the Century 21 Ladies.  With Sakura Yokomine and Mamiko Higa playing in the LPGA's International Crown, representing Japan with Ai and Mika Miyazato, along with Onnarin Sattayabanphot on Team Thailand and Teresa Lu and Phoebe Yao on Team Taiwan, it'll be interesting to see who in the JLPGA event's field stands up to Sun-Ju Ahn and Bo-Mee Lee!]