New Zealand’s world No. 1 Lydia Ko fired a first-round 66 on Thursday to seize a share of the lead in the weather-disrupted first round of the US LPGA Founders Cup.
Ko, at 17 the youngest golfer ever to claim the world No. 1 ranking, shook off the weather delay that pushed back the start of the round by four hours.
Teeing off on 10, she had three birdies in her first nine holes. She added birdies at the first, third and fifth before her only miscue of the day, a three-putt bogey at the seventh.
Photo: AFP
She rebounded with her seventh birdie of the day at the par-four eighth and capped her round with a par to share the clubhouse lead with Germany’s Sophia Popov and US golfers Kim Kaufman and Tiffany Joh.
Ko said her score could have been lower.
“I think I had like three [putts] that were perfectly on line, but I left it short, and that three-putt on seven,” she said. “But I guess everything balances out.”
“I hit the pin with my chip in 18 — that could have been a much further par putt. So I think six-under is a good start and I just have got to take the positives out of it,” Ko added.
Darkness halted play with half of the 132-strong field yet to finish.
In the Taiwanese contingent, Min Lee was five shots off the lead after carding a one-under 71, while former world No. 1 Yani Tseng was one-under after playing six holes. Hsu Wei-ling shot a one-over 73 to sit alongside Candie Kung on the leaderboard, who only managed to complete five holes of her first round.
After waking up before 5am only to see her tee time pushed back, Ko said she was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.
However, she said the rain-soaked course had its advantages.
“They weren’t really easy,” she said of the conditions, “but even if we were hitting a long club into the greens, because it was soft, it was more receptive.”
“I guess you might lose some distance with the drives, but then you can be a bit more aggressive on the greens,” she said.
Ko has now broken par in 21 straight LPGA tour rounds, a streak that started at last year’s season-ending Tour Championship.
The South Korean-born Kiwi, who owns six LPGA Tour titles and 10 worldwide, arrived in Phoenix after a strong showing overseas.
She won the Women’s Australian Open and the New Zealand Women’s Open back-to-back before finishing runner-up to former world No. 1 In-bee Park of South Korea in the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore earlier this month.
Popov and Joh both posted rounds with six birdies and no bogeys, while Kaufman had seven birdies with one bogey to join the leading group.
They were one stroke in front of South Korea’s Chun In-gee and Thailand’s Moriya Jutanugarn, both in the clubhouse on 67, with Dewi Claire Schreefel of the Netherlands also at five-under through 10 holes.
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