LANCASTER, Pa. — Wichanee Meechai grew to become 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 over the past six holes to complete at 4-under 136, two photographs in entrance of Lee with solely two different gamers underneath 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.
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“I really feel like I won’t be making loads of birdies on the simpler programs. I am not that individual,” Meechai stated in attempting to elucidate her 36-hole lead in a significant. “I like when it’s good to assume loads, 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 onerous,” 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 yr. Her 18th and most definitely remaining U.S. Ladies’s Open ended early with rounds of 78-75.
It would finish with Korda again house in Florida, lacking the minimize for the primary time in practically a yr.
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 solution 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 gained six of her final seven tournaments, ran off three straight birdies towards the top of the entrance 9 to get in vary of the minimize.
However she did not hit the ball effectively 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 minimize by two.
“After I made these three birdies in a row, I needed to make the minimize,” Korda stated. “I knew that I used to be type of hovering round it, and I simply could not get something occurring the again.”
Additionally lacking the minimize 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 Beginner champion Megan Schofill.
Lee delivered a stretch much more spectacular than Meechai, hers coming in the midst 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 will probably 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 enjoying bogey-free over her final 12 holes.
Most telling was Saso being requested to explain her greatest shot and Lee requested concerning the one shot she wish to have again. Each needed to flip towards a scoring terminal exhibiting 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 subsequent gap and never doing something to damage 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 stated. “I take into consideration lacking the minimize as a result of I do know that I can shoot like 1 underneath 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 minimize 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 minimize till her chip smacked into the pin on her remaining gap and settled 2 ft away for par as a substitute of rolling off the entrance of the inexperienced again into the green.
