Olivia Mehaffey put together a level-par second round 73 at the LET’s Joburg Ladies Open at Modderfontein Golf Club, but it wasn’t enough to earn the Tandragee player a weekend tee-time.
The major damage was done in the closing stages of round one where a triple-bogey and a double-bogey on her final three holes saw Mehaffey finish the day on +5 having battled back to level par after a disappointing opening nine holes.
She gave herself a mountain to climb when she bogeyed the third and double-bogeyed the fourth in Thursday’s second round, but she bounced back with a birdies at the par-5 fifth and eighth holes, giving another shot back in between to make the turn at +2 for the day.
She began the back nine with another birdie-four, dropped one at the 12th, but then birdied three-in-a-row, going two, three, three at 14, 15 and 16 to get to red figures for the day, but a bogey on the par-4 17th brought her back to level par for the day and that’s the way she’d finish.
The round was a five-stroke improvement on her opening round, but unfortunately, it was too little, too late. Still, the two-under back nine to close out the tournament will be consolation of sorts for the 25-year-old Arizona State graduate who will remain in South Africa and travel to Cape Town for the Investec South African Women’s Open next week.
Denmark’s Nicole Broch Estrup leads the way at the tournament mid-point, having followed her opening 72 with a best of the day, seven-under 66 in round two.
Estrup carded seven birdies and kept her card blemish-free to first catch and then pass the overnight leaders, and she’ll take a two-stroke lead over Swede Linnea Johansson, Klara Davidson Spilkova of the Czech Republic, and England’s Lily May Humphreys who ended the day in a three-way tie for second.
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