LANCASTER, Pa. — Wichanee Meechai turned the most recent shock in a U.S. Ladies’s Open stuffed with them. She began Friday with 4 straight birdies and matched the low rating of the week with a 3-under 67 for a two-shot lead going right into a weekend that will not embrace Nelly Korda.
Meechai, a 31-year-old from Thailand, had by no means completed within the prime 10 in her 20 earlier appearances within the majors. Her solely victory acknowledged by the ladies’s world rating was 9 years in the past on the Taiwan LPGA.
She went from 5 pictures forward of Andrea Lee to 2 pictures behind in a span of 5 holes. Meechai steadied herself with two birdies during the last six holes to complete at 4-under 136, two pictures in entrance of Lee with solely two different gamers below par.
A pair of former Ladies’s Open champions, Minjee Lee (69) and Yuka Saso (71) have been three pictures again at Lancaster Nation Membership.
“I really feel like I may not be making a number of birdies on the better programs. I am not that particular person,” Meechai stated in attempting to elucidate her 36-hole lead in a significant. “I like when it’s good to suppose rather a lot, when it’s good to land it shorter and be affected person.”
That labored to perfection on her opening 4 holes, all birdie putts inside 6 ft.
“I simply picked the membership that is shorter and hit it laborious,” she stated.
The week began with a shock announcement by Lexi Thompson that she’s going to retire from a full schedule on the finish of the 12 months. Her 18th and most probably last U.S. Ladies’s Open ended early with rounds of 78-75.
It is going to finish with Korda again dwelling in Florida, lacking the reduce for the primary time in almost a 12 months.
Korda acquired a small measure of revenge on the par-3 twelfth, the place on Thursday she hit into the water 3 times and made a career-worst 10 on her option to an 80. This time the pin was to the again, not the entrance. She got here up so quick with a chunky 8-iron that it appeared her golf ball would roll again into the water.
It was held up by a patch of grass. She jabbed a pitch to twenty ft and holed the par putt, smiled and provided a playful expletive on the inexperienced.
“I needed to make a birdie to get my revenge on that gap, however par will do,” she stated.
Korda, who got here into the Ladies’s Open having received six of her final seven tournaments, ran off three straight birdies towards the top of the entrance 9 to get in vary of the reduce.
However she did not hit the ball nicely off the tee, or from the green when given the possibility. She had solely 4 seems to be at birdie on the again 9, shot 70 and missed the reduce by two.
“Once I made these three birdies in a row, I needed to make the reduce,” Korda stated. “I knew that I used to be type of hovering round it, and I simply could not get something happening the again.”
Additionally lacking the reduce have been Rose Zhang, Lydia Ko, Brooke Henderson and defending Ladies’s Open champion Allisen Corpuz.
Amongst these sticking round was 15-year-old Asterisk Talley — her first identify is Greek for “little star” — who had 15 pars in her spherical of 71 and was in a bunch at 1-over 141 that included U.S. Ladies’s Newbie champion Megan Schofill.
Lee delivered a stretch much more spectacular than Meechai, hers coming in the course of the spherical. The Stanford alum was on the ropes and in a bunker on No. 1 — her tenth gap of the spherical — when her shot rolled true to a again pin and dropped for eagle.
Lee adopted with three straight birdies, and all of a sudden was two away from Meechai within the group behind her. Lee three-putted from 30 ft for bogey on No. 5, and failed to save lots of par from a bunker on the par-3 eighth.
She will likely be within the final group Saturday, with Minjee Lee and Saso forward of them and with much more expertise in coping with such a stern take a look at.
Minjee Lee, whose two majors embrace a Ladies’s Open at Pine Needles two years in the past, made consecutive bogeys on the flip after which performed mistake-free the remainder of the best way. Saso, the Ladies’s Open champion at Olympic Membership in 2021, steadied herself from a rocky begin by taking part in bogey-free over her final 12 holes.
Most telling was Saso being requested to explain her finest shot and Lee requested concerning the one shot she want to have again. Each needed to flip towards a scoring terminal displaying their scorecards, needing to jog their reminiscences concerning the rounds they’d simply accomplished.
That is the type of golf a Ladies’s Open, notably on a standard course like Lancaster, can generate. It is about grinding, attending to the following gap and never doing something to destroy a spherical.
After which there’s Meechai, delightfully self-deprecating about how she approaches this take a look at.
“I am the one that has no confidence in any respect,” she stated. “I take into consideration lacking the reduce as a result of I do know that I can shoot like 1 below and subsequent day 8 over. It is really easy for me. Attempting not to consider it’s the hardest half for me in order that’s why I am so nervous.”
Two different amateurs have been among the many 75 gamers to make the reduce at 8-over 148. Considered one of them was Adela Cernousek of France, a junior at Texas A&M who received the NCAA title two weeks in the past. She opened with a 69 and was on the verge of capturing 80 and lacking the reduce till her chip smacked into the pin on her last gap and settled 2 ft away for par as an alternative of rolling off the entrance of the inexperienced again into the green.
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