I.K. Kim started last and finished first on Wednesday in the first round of the Lotte Championship. Kim birdied her final three holes and four of the last five for a seven-under 65 and a two-stroke lead.
Playing in the last group of the day off the 10th tee, Kim had eight birdies and one bogey in winds gusting to 40kph at Ko Olina Golf Club. The South Korean player won the last of her three LPGA Tour titles in 2010.
“I hit a really good putt at No. 7, and at No. 8 I hit an eight-iron downwind that stayed on top of the green so I was able to look at a makeable putt,” she said. “At the ninth, it was getting really dark. It was dinnertime really. There were just the three of us out there.”
Photo: AFP
From 190 yards, she aimed 20 feet right and hit her five-wood into the wind. The ball stopped 12 feet from the hole. She could see well enough to make the putt and shoot the same score she had in the final round two years ago en route to a fourth-place tie.
“Birdie on the three finishing holes is why 65 was possible,” Kim said. “I didn’t think it was possible when I started today.”
South Korean players held the first five spots on the leaderboard.
Na-yeon Choi, Inbee Park and rookie Sei-young Kim shot 67, while Jenny Shin was fifth after a 68.
Choi had four birdies on her second nine to take the lead in the morning wave. Park birdied four of her last six to catch her, slam-dunking a 45-foot putt on the final hole.
“I judged the wind great and holed a lot of good putts,” Park said. “Especially the last putt. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I holed that long a putt.”
Choi, Sei-young Kim and Park have all won this year. Choi won the season-opening Coates Golf Championship in Florida for her eighth LPGA title, Sei-young Kim took the Pure Silk Bahamas LPGA Classic and Park won the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore.
Founders Cup winner Hyo-joo Kim, Kia Classic champion Cristie Kerr, Morgan Pressel and Paula Creamer were in the nine-player group at 69.
Hawaii’s Michelle Wie, the defending champion, got to three-under on the 15th, but bogeyed the next hole and finished on 70. Wie hit the flag with her approach shot on the final hole, but left her 8-foot birdie putt short.
“Some of the putts you kind of have to play for the wind as well, too,” said Wie, who needed 31 putts with a chip-in. “It’s not like it’s a constant, so you have to wait for the right moment for the wind to blow or not blow. It gets tricky out there. You’ve just got to stay patient and try to hit solid putts and take whatever comes at you.”
Taiwan’s Yani Tseng and Wei-ling Hsu were tied for 69th with a two-over 74, while Min Lee was further down the leaderboard tied for 85th with a three-over 75.
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