Three-time tour winner Minjee Lee of Australia yesterday finished with a superb eagle putt to be among the four leaders after day one of the Honda LPGA Thailand at the Siam Country Club.
Lee sank a 45-foot putt on the 18th hole to card a six-under-par 66 to share a one-shot lead with 2016 champion Lexi Thompson, Jessica Korda and local hope Moriya Jutanugarn.
“I just hit the collar. I didn’t know if I was going to have enough. Such a big break there. I’m glad it caught the hole,” Lee said. “It’s a second-shot golf course. Your approaches are really important and obviously being in the right spots with the undulation. And if you have a hot putter that’s going to help.”
Lee earlier this month won the Victorian Open near Melbourne and last week opened her LPGA Tour account this year at the Women’s Australian Open, finishing fifth.
Thompson, who won this event in 2016 by six shots with a 20-under total and tied for fourth last year, started her latest round in style with an eagle followed by a birdie, only to bogey the third hole. She shot four more birdies.
“It definitely helps to get that kind of start, but I was just trying to keep that momentum and not get ahead of myself,” Thompson said.
Her compatriot Korda had a roller-coaster round that featured eagles on the first and 17th holes, five birdies, a double-bogey on the sixth and two bogeys.
Moriya was the only player among the leading group to end the day without a bogey.
“I had a good start today, it was better than I expected,” said Moriya, who finished seventh last year.
She is trying to become the first Thai winner of the tournament.
Two-time champion Amy Yang and world No. 2 Park Sung-hyun were among six players on five-under.
Taiwan’s Chien Pei-yun and Kaohsiung-born Candie Kung of the US both carded one-over 73s to finish in a group of 10 sharing 47th place.
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