Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow have a mountain to climb just to make the cut at the first women’s major of the year after poor opening rounds in Texas.
Maguire let her first round get away from her on the back nine as she shot a four-over 76 while a horror start from Meadow set the tone for a five-over 77 at the Chevron Championship.
When play was suspended during the opening round Maguire had just birdied the par-3 7th before the hooter zapped all of her momentum away. When she returned to the course, her round unravelled before her as she dropped four shots on her way home.
Bogeys on 10, 12, 17 and 18 saw her all but shoot herself out of the championship and leave her three shots below the cut line ahead of her Friday morning tee time.
Meadow is a shot further back after a birdie on 2 was followed by a bogey and a triple bogey 8 on the par-5 4th. The Jordanstown native did improve with a birdie, bogey, birdie run to the turn but three bogeys in a row to open her back nine sent her tumbling down the leaderboard.
Meadow did birdie 18 having let another shot go on 16 but like Maguire, she has serious work to do to just be around for the weekend.
At the top, Nelly Korda looked in ominous form as she moved to within one of leader Peiyun Chien with a four-under 68. The American shares second with Marina Alex, Lilia Vu, Chella Choi, Ayaka Furue and Stephanie Kyriacou.
Korda took advantage of her length of the tee to birdie all the par fives.
“I took advantage of the par-5s today. I think I birdied them all, so that was important, as I’m a bit of a longer hitter. Overall I played pretty well. It was nice to finish the way I did with just a tap-in birdie, but made a couple mistakes here and there where it was more of the yardage where I was a little too aggressive and I left myself a little short-sided chip, and with the rain that we got during the delay, I wasn’t sure how it was going to react, bump-and-running it or flopping it. Just made a couple of mistakes there, but that’s a given at a major championship.”
Chien of Chinese Taipei is in uncharted territory as she chases her first LPGA victory. The 32-year-old has missed two of her first three cuts this term but finished 4th at last week’s Lotte Championship.
The woman they call ‘money’ has only earned just over $1 million in a well travelled career and she was pleased with how she navigated her way around the golf course.
“It feels so hard. We’re doing very well today, just focused on what I want, what we want, and which way we can miss. I think we did very well today.”
Scoring HERE
Leave a comment