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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 embody 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 photographs forward of Andrea Lee to 2 photographs 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 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 loads of birdies on the simpler programs. I am not that particular person,” Meechai mentioned in attempting to elucidate her 36-hole lead in a significant. “I like when you could suppose quite a bit, when you could 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 onerous,” she mentioned.
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 yr. Her 18th and almost definitely ultimate U.S. Ladies’s Open ended early with rounds of 78-75.
It is going to finish with Korda again house in Florida, lacking the lower for the primary time in practically a yr.
Korda acquired a small measure of revenge on the par-3 twelfth, the place on Thursday she hit into the water thrice and made a career-worst 10 on her strategy 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 supplied a playful expletive on the inexperienced.
“I needed to make a birdie to get my revenge on that gap, however par will do,” she mentioned.
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 lower.
However she did not hit the ball effectively off the tee, or from the golf green when given the possibility. She had solely 4 appears at birdie on the again 9, shot 70 and missed the lower by two.
“Once I made these three birdies in a row, I needed to make the lower,” Korda mentioned. “I knew that I used to be form of hovering round it, and I simply could not get something happening the again.”
Additionally lacking the lower 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 gaggle 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 ft for bogey on No. 5, and failed to save lots of par from a bunker on the par-3 eighth.
She might 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 check.
Minjee Lee, whose two majors embody 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 way in which. 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 in regards to the one shot she wish to have again. Each needed to flip towards a scoring terminal displaying their scorecards, needing to jog their recollections in regards to the rounds that they had simply accomplished.
That is the form of golf a Ladies’s Open, notably on a standard course like Lancaster, can generate. It is about grinding, attending to the subsequent gap and never doing something to wreck a spherical.
After which there’s Meechai, delightfully self-deprecating about how she approaches this check.
“I am the one who has no confidence in any respect,” she mentioned. “I take into consideration lacking the lower 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. Making an attempt 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 lower at 8-over 148. One in all them was Adela Cernousek of France, a junior at Texas A&M who gained the NCAA title two weeks in the past. She opened with a 69 and was on the verge of taking pictures 80 and lacking the lower till her chip smacked into the pin on her ultimate gap and settled 2 ft away for par as an alternative of rolling off the entrance of the inexperienced again into the golf green.
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