Defending champion Park Hee-young and Feng Shanshan topped the second-round leaderboard on Friday in the LPGA Tour’s Manulife Financial Classic, a stroke ahead of Michelle Wie.
Park had a 5-under 66 to match Feng at 11-under 131 at the Grey Silo course. They are both bogey-free through 36 holes.
“The weather was lot better than first round,” Park said. “My goal was try to leave uphill putts and that worked well.”
Feng shot a 66.
“I’m really happy about my playing today because it’s a bogey-free round again, six birdies,” Feng said. “I heard the weekend is supposed to be nice, so we need to go for many, many birdies.”
Wie, the winner in Hawaii in April, followed her opening 65 with a bogey-free 67.
“Just wasn’t getting anything close to the hole today,” Wie said. “It’s not a really easy golf course. Definitely, the wind was changing a lot today. There were a lot of times where I thought it was downwind and it was into the wind, so that was definitely difficult.”
Anna Nordqvist played her opening nine — the back nine at Grey Silo — in 5-under 30 and added birdies on Nos. 3 and 4.
“I hit all fairways and all greens, so that makes it a little bit easier,” Nordqvist said. “I’m a little bit disappointed with the last couple holes because I hit a lot of good putts that didn’t go in. Last one I left it about a roll short dead in the middle.”
Second-ranked Inbee Park was four strokes back at 7-under-par 66.
The only Taiwanese player at the event, Candie Kung, improved on her first-round 70 to post a 68 and move into a share of 19th at 4-under-par 138.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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