LANCASTER, Pa. — Wichanee Meechai grew to become the newest shock in a U.S. Ladies’s Open full of 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 gained’t embody Nelly Korda.
Meechai is a 31-year-old Thai whose solely victory acknowledged by the ladies’s world rating was 9 years in the past on the Taiwan LPGA. She had by no means completed within the high 10 in her 20 earlier appearances within the majors.
She went from 5 photographs forward of Andrea Lee to 2 photographs behind in a span of 5 holes. Meechai steadied herself with two birdies over the past six holes to complete at 4-under 136, two photographs 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 photographs again at Lancaster Nation Membership.
“I really feel like I won’t be making a variety of birdies on the better programs. I’m not that particular person,” Meechai stated in attempting to elucidate her 36-hole lead in a significant. “I like when you want to suppose so much, when you want to land it shorter and be affected person.”
That labored to perfection on her opening 4 holes, all birdie putts inside 6 toes.
“I simply picked the membership that’s shorter and hit it laborious,” she stated.
The week began with a shock announcement by Lexi Thompson that she is going to retire from a full schedule on the finish of the 12 months. Her 18th and probably remaining U.S. Ladies’s Open ended early with rounds of 78-75.
It’s going to finish with Korda again residence in Florida, lacking the reduce for the time in practically a 12 months.
Nelly Korda couldn’t overcome her Thursday 10 on the twelfth gap in Spherical 1.
Korda received 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 technique to an 80. This time the pin was to the again, not the entrance, and she or he got here up so quick with a chunky 8-iron and it appeared sure her golf ball would roll again into the water.
It was held up by a patch of grass. She jabbed a pitch to twenty toes and holed the par putt, smiled and provided a playful expletive on the inexperienced.
“I wished to make a birdie to get my revenge on that gap, however par will do,” she stated.
She ought to have saved these phrases for her golf. Korda, who got here into the Ladies’s Open having gained six of her final seven tournaments, ran off three straight birdies towards the tip of the entrance 9 to get in vary of the reduce.
However she didn’t hit the ball nicely off the tee, or from the green when given the possibility. She had solely 4 appears at birdie on the again 9, shot 70 and missed the reduce by two.
“After I made these three birdies in a row, I wished to make the reduce,” Korda stated. “I knew that I used to be sort of hovering round it, and I simply couldn’t get something occurring 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 title 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 instantly was two away from Meechai within the group behind her. Lee three-putted from 30 toes for bogey on No. 5, and failed to save lots of par from a bunker on the par-3 eighth.
