Nitori Ladies Sunday: Ji-Yai Shin Gets 3rd Victory in Last 6 Starts

Ji-Yai Shin is known as the Final Round Queen, but after making 9-straight pars to start her round today at the Nitori Ladies, she had opened the door to JLPGA money-list leader Bo-Mee Lee and 5-time winner Saiki Fujita.  Lee, playing 2 groups ahead of Shin and Fujita, followed up a 1st-hole birdie with 3 in a row later on the front to catch her at -6.  Fujita then caught fire late on the front, with 3 birdies in a 4-hole stretch to join Shin and Lee.  Shin just kept making pars on the back, too, parring 10, 11, and 12 to stay at -6, which was enough to put pressure on Lee, who bogeyed the par-5 12th and the par-3 13th, and Fujita, who bogeyed the par-4 11th and the 12.  When Shin birdied 13 to offset Lee's birdie on 15 and Fujita's on the same hole as her, she had opened up a 2-shot lead on them, which she extended to 3 with a birdie of her own on 15.  When she parred out to finish at -8 and they parred out to end their week at -5, Shin had earned her 3rd JLPGA victory of 2014--and in her last 6 starts--as well as her 8th overall title on tour.

With her win, Shin moves into the top 4 on the JLPGA money list, but Lee's runner-up finish enabled her to extend her lead on everyone except Shin.

1. Bo-Mee Lee ￥104.86M
2. Sun-Ju Ahn ￥90.51M
3. Misuzu Narita ￥69.87M
4. Ji-Yai Shin ￥68.13M
5. Miki Sakai ￥60.66M
6. Erina Hara ￥48.07M
7. Teresa Lu ￥47.34M
8. Ayaka Watanabe ￥42.82M
9. Esther Lee ￥40.73M
10. Onnarin Sattayabanphot ￥39.54M
11. Rikako Morita ￥37.11M
12. Lala Anai ￥36.01M
13. Mi-Jeong Jeon ￥34.32M
14. Ritsuko Ryu ￥33.78M
15. Shiho Oyama ￥32.35M
16. Yuki Ichinose ￥31.61M
17. Momoko Ueda ￥31.17M
18. Saiki Fujita ￥30.47M
19. Ji-Hee Lee ￥27.65M

20. Phoebe Yao ￥27.65M
21. Na-Ri Lee ￥27.52M
22. Mayu Hattori ￥26.52M
23. Hikari Fujita ￥25.13M
24. Yumiko Yoshida ￥23.42M
25. Kaori Ohe ￥22.92M
26. Asako Fujimoto ￥22.41M
27. Sakura Yokomine ￥21.82M
28. Yukari Baba ￥21.29M
29. Junko Omote ￥21.05M
30. Megumi Kido ￥20.80M
31. Yeon-Ju Jung ￥20.52M
32. Mami Fukuda ￥20.13M
33. Mamiko Higa ￥20.11M
34. Shanshan Feng ￥20.04M
35. Natsuka Hori ￥19.24M
36. Soo-Yun Kang ￥18.79M
37. Erika Kikuchi ￥18.73M

38. Rumi Yoshiba ￥17.82M
39. Kotono Kozuma ￥17.54M
40. Akane Iijima ￥17.45M

41. Miki Saiki ￥16.28M
42. Na-Ri Kim ￥15.75M
43. Yuri Fudoh ￥14.29M
44. Yukari Nishiyama ￥13.87M
45. Megumi Shimokawa ￥13.79M

Yumiko Yoshida and Shiho Oyama were the only other players to finish under par this week.  Let's see if Yoshida can continue her strong play next week at the Golf 5 Ladies and successfully defend her title.  I'm not seeing any of the top 3 on the money list in the field list, so it's looking like Shin has a good shot at passing Narita and making it an all-Korean top 3 on the JLPGA this time next Sunday!