(File photograph) Nelly Korda hits her tee shot on the sixteenth gap within the second spherical in girls’s particular person stroke play throughout the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer season Video games at Le Golf Nationwide. Obligatory Credit score: Katie Goodale-USA TODAY Sports activities Nelly Korda surged into the lead on the Ladies’s Open at St. Andrews on Friday and is three pictures away from the sphere in a bid to win for a seventh time in 2024.
Korda had 4 birdies and not using a bogey and is 8 underneath with consecutive rounds of 68. Defending champion Lilia Vu and England’s Charley Hull, the native favourite and first-round chief, are tied for second place at 5 underneath on the course in Fife, Scotland.
“I am simply making an attempt to remain very current and never take into consideration something aside from one shot at a time,” stated Korda, a two-time main winner who has by no means completed higher than ninth within the Ladies’s Open. “And no matter golf and hyperlinks golf throws at me, I will take it head on.”
Korda took the lead at 6 underneath on the flip, enjoying the again 9 first with birdies on 17 and 18, and capped her second spherical with a 3 on the par-4 ninth, the place she almost drove the inexperienced and putted from the perimeter. She rolled in her second putt for the birdie, a lot the identical as her lengthy putts that discovered the cup on 17 and 18.
Hull shot even par and Vu had a 2-under 70 on Friday. In search of her first profession main title, Hull stated she gave too many strokes again on the greens to maintain tempo with Korda.
“I left quite a lot of putts on the market. I feel Nelly had 30 putts and I had 36 putts,” Korda stated. “In order that’s six putts that I’ve misplaced to her on the greens.”
Winner of the Chevron Championship, Korda can add one other main title and run up her season victory whole by closing out the motion in Scotland.
Extra grueling climate circumstances are within the forecast at St. Andrews, the place the temperatures have been chilly and the wind gusty.
“Solely three pictures behind — that is nothing going into the weekend, particularly on this golf course,” Hull stated.
China’s Ruoning Yin shook off two bogeys with a birdie at 14 to affix the primary web page of the leaderboard at 4 underneath with 4 holes to play, and that is the place she completed after a spherical of 72.
Olympic gold medalist Lydia Ko shot a 70 to achieve the clubhouse at 3 underneath as a part of a logjam 5 strokes behind Korda that additionally contains Ashleigh Buhai (69) and Casandra Alexander (68), each of South Africa, Taiwan’s Peiyun Chien (69) and Japan’s Mao Saigo (72).
Prime-ranked beginner Lottie Woad was 3 underneath for the event on the flip and gave one again, lacking a brief par putt on No. 12, her first bogey of the day. The 20-year-old England native attends Florida State and is making her Ladies’s Open debut and enjoying in her fourth main, monitoring to simply make the minimize for the primary time for the reason that 2023 Chevron Championship.
Woad completed with a 70 and is a part of a bunch of seven girls who enter the third spherical tied for eleventh and 6 strokes behind Korda.
Ana Pelaez Trivino of Spain was disqualified Friday as a result of her caddie used distance-measuring know-how, banned by the occasion, on two holes — the tenth and 18th. The LPGA rookie posted scores of 72-74 within the first two rounds at 2 over and would have made the minimize in a significant for the primary time this season.
–Subject Degree Media
