LANCASTER, Pa. — Former champion Yuka Saso leaned on her putter to outlive a brutally powerful begin to the U.S. Ladies’s Open on Thursday, a gap spherical that featured Nelly Korda making a ten on her third gap and solely 4 gamers barely beating par.
Saso had three large par putts to start out the again 9 at Lancaster Nation Membership, rolled in two medium-length birdie putts towards the tip of her spherical and completed with three putts from the collar of the 18th inexperienced for bogey and a 2-under 68.
It felt even decrease than that contemplating all of the carnage round her. The main 10 gamers from the ladies’s world rating had a mean rating of 75.5 — together with Korda’s 80 — and solely two-time main champion Minjee Lee was not over par.
“It’s a U.S. Open. It’s a serious. It’s the most important main championship, and I feel it’s one of the tough weeks that we’ll play,” Saso stated. “I don’t inform myself to be assured or something like that.”
Saso, who seized on a Lexi Thompson meltdown in 2021 to win the Ladies’s Open at Olympic Membership, led by one shot over Andrea Lee, Wichanee Meechai of Thailand and just lately topped NCAA champion Adela Cernousek of France.
Cernousek, a junior at Texas A&M, had firm amongst amateurs. Three of them had been within the group at even-par 70 — U.S. Ladies’s Beginner champion Megan Schofill, Catherine Park and 15-year-old Asterisk Talley, who’s coming off her first USGA title on the U.S. Ladies’s Beginner 4-ball Championship.
Lee, who picked up her second main within the Ladies’s Open at Pine Needles two years in the past, holed out from 15 ft simply off the inexperienced on the par-3 seventeenth to get again to even par.
“Simply come again and attempt to beat the course once more,” she stated.
The remainder of the LPGA Tour’s greatest stars took a beating, none as dangerous or as stunning as Korda. The No. 1 participant in girls’s golf, Korda arrived at Lancaster having gained six of her final seven tournaments. Three holes into her opening spherical, she was despatched reeling.
Korda made a ten on her third gap Thursday and failed to interrupt 80 at Lancaster Nation Membership.
Korda hit from a again bunker right into a stream on the par-3 twelfth gap, after which pitched into the stream from the opposite facet twice on her solution to a ten. She added 4 bogeys over the following 15 holes and signed for an 80, matching her highest spherical as an expert.
“Not lots of constructive ideas, actually,” Korda stated. “I simply didn’t play properly at this time. I didn’t hit it good. I discovered myself within the tough lots. Making a ten on a par 3 will certainly not do you any good at a U.S. Open.
“Yeah,” she concluded, “only a dangerous day on the workplace.”
It was a foul day for therefore many others. Rose Zhang, who ended Korda’s five-tournament profitable streak three weeks in the past in New Jersey, shell-shocked when she walked off the 18th inexperienced with yet one more three-putt bogey and a 79.
Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson every shot 80. The common rating for the sphere was 75.2.
The wind was swirling at among the larger factors on the course, and the greens had been agency and bouncy, simply how the USGA likes it. The 156-player discipline produced simply over 900 scores of bogey or worse — in Korda’s case, a septuple bogey.
Thompson, possible enjoying in her closing U.S. Ladies’s Open after asserting she is going to not play a full schedule after this yr, began her again 9 by going from bunker to bunker to bunker to thick tough and taking triple bogey. She shot 78.
Saso picked up 5.7 pictures on the sphere together with her putter, and it carried her to the lead.
“I made actually good putts. I feel I used to be extra fortunate than enjoying good,” Saso stated.
She has a shot at a peculiar slice of victory this week if she had been to win and develop into the one Ladies’s Open champion to play beneath two flags.
Saso gained as a Filipino on the Olympic Membership and the next yr — earlier than turning 21 — declared her citizenship to be Japan (her father is Japanese). An enormous week may additionally thrust her into place to get again to the Olympics beneath a unique flag.
That looks like a good distance off, particularly after such a tough day of labor.
“There’s a lot golf left,” Saso stated. “The golf course could be very tough and the circumstances are very powerful, particularly with the wind with it swirling and when it’s blowing 15 mph with the agency greens and quick greens.”
It didn’t appear to harm the beginner, significantly Cernousek. She dropped solely two pictures, certainly one of them on a three-putt from 40 ft on the 14th gap, and held her nerve to interrupt par. She was amazed seeing her title on each scoreboard.
Adela Cernousek was certainly one of a handful of amateurs who outshined many execs on Day 1 at Lancaster.
“I used to be like, ‘Wow!’ I used to be watching each leaderboard on the course,” she stated.
Talley is certainly one of two 15-year-olds within the discipline at Lancaster and performed properly above her years with good selections when she obtained out of place. Her one gaffe got here on the par-5 seventh gap when she solely superior her second shot about 50 yards out of the thick tough, laid up after which put it within the water fronting the inexperienced. She made a triple bogey.
However Talley — her mom says Asterisk is Greek for “Little Star” — adopted with a nine-hole stretch of three birdies and 6 pars, not dropping one other shot till the seventeenth,
“I really feel like I may have finished lots higher at this time, however I’m not mad in any respect about my spherical,” Talley stated. “I used to be listening to everyone even par is an effective spherical at this time. I want I may have been a pair beneath par.”
