Sakura Yokomine bogeyed the final hole for a five-under 67 and a one-stroke lead over Brooke Henderson, Paula Creamer and Amy Yang in the LPGA Taiwan Championship yesterday.
Yokomine eagled the par-five 12th and had three back-nine birdies at windy Miramar before dropping the stroke on the par-five 18th in the second of six events on the tour’s Asian Swing. The 30-year-old Japanese player is winless in two seasons on the LPGA Tour after winning 23 times on the Japan LPGA Tour.
Henderson birdied three of the final four holes, playing in the last group of the day. The 19-year-old Canadian has two victories this year, winning the major KPMG Women’s PGA in June.
Photo: Chao Hsin-tien, Taipei Times
Creamer had a bogey-free round. Yang was six-under through 13 holes, then bogeyed the next two.
Jang Ha-na, Ai Miyazato, Lee-Anne Pace, Beatriz Recari and Park Hee-young shot 69s.
Defending champion Lydia Ko had a double bogey on the par-four fifth in a 70. The top-ranked New Zealander won by nine strokes at Miramar last year. She has four LPGA Tour victories this season.
Photo: Chao Hsin-tien, Taipei Times
Leading among Taiwanese were Tsai Pei-ying and amateur Chang Ya-chun, who shot one-under 71s for a share of 14th.
Home favorite Yani Tseng closed with a quadruple-bogey nine on 18 for a 79. Playing on a sponsor exemption, she also had a double-bogey on the 12th.
Tseng won the inaugural event in 2011 at Sunrise and took the previous of her 15 LPGA Tour titles in March 2012.
Tseng was among a bevy of Taiwanese in a share of 73rd, with Chang Hsuan-ping, Liang Yi-ling, Hanna Chen, Yeh Hsin-ning and Yu Pei-lin all on seven-over.
Hsieh Yu-ling and Kaohsiung native Candie Kung were even-par 72 for a share of 24th, while Doris Chen (73), Cheng Ssu-chia (73), amateur Hou Yu-chiang (73), Phoebe Yao (74), Hsu Wei-ling (75), Chen I-wen (75), Chen Meng-chu (77), Lin Tzu-chi (78), Chen Yu-ju (78) and Kuo Ai-chen (82) made up the rest of the home field.
Yokomine and Henderson are making their 26th starts of the year, tied with Kim Kaufman for the tour lead. Henderson plans to play all six weeks in Asia, a journey that started last week in China, will take her to South Korea, back to China and then to Malaysia and Japan.
Kaufman had a 73.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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