Meena Lee finished a roller-coaster second round on Friday with a share of the lead at the North Texas Shootout, putting herself in contention for a first LPGA Tour title in eight years.
Lee wound up with a seven-under 64 after an inconsistent start to the round. She began with an eagle-three on the 510-yard 10th hole, followed with a bogey, consecutive birdies, another bogey, three birdies in a row and then a bogey on the par-five 18th.
The South Korean’s scorecard for the front nine was much cleaner, with birdies on holes three to five and only pars aside from that. She started the tournament on Thursday with a double bogey on the very first hole.
Photo: AFP
“I’m happy to be done with the second round. I’m really happy,” said Lee, who has her best 36-hole score this season at eight-under 134.
That gave a share of the lead with Caroline Masson, who had a 67. The German led this event after two rounds last year, but faded to finish 15th.
They were a stroke ahead of US pair Natalie Gulbis and Stacy Lewis.
With a 65 on Friday, Gulbis had her first sub-70 round this year as she struggles with nagging pain in her left wrist.
Lewis, the No. 3 player in the world, had a bogey-free 64 to match Lee for the best second-round score at Las Colinas Country Club. Lewis had four consecutive birdies before finishing with seven straight pars, and Lee played her first nine holes — the back nine — without a par.
Christiana Kim (69) was alone in fifth at six under, one stroke better than first-round leader Suzann Pettersen (71), Julieta Granada (66), Dewi Claire Schreefel (66), Cristie Kerr (70) and Dori Carter (70).
Top-ranked Inbee Park, the defending champ in North Texas, was three under after a 68.
Candie Kung, the only Taiwanese player at the event, shot a second-round 74 and missed the cut.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier