Stephanie Meadow recorded her first LPGA Tour top-10 finish since last year’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, but nobody could stop American Bailey Tardy who finished like a steam train to secure a four shot victory at the Blue Bay LPGA.
With the breeze swirling and the heavily undulating greens ready to wreak havoc on wayward approach shots, the potential for a bolter from the pack meant that Meadow, starting the day four off the lead, was still in with an outside chance of capturing her maiden LPGA Tour victory in what is now her 11th professional season, and though she’d make seven birdies in the round – her highest birdie tally on any given day this week having twice made six – her aggressive approach also led to four bogeys.
Still, her -11 tally was good for a solo eighth-place finish, an excellent return having spent the last six weeks on the sidelines as the stunted nature of the early season LPGA events combined with limited fields to deny the opportunity to compete.
She’s now two-for-two in cuts made and climbs to 45th in the Race to CME Globe rankings before the Tour returns to US soil in a fortnight’s time.
Tardy began the day tied alongside fellow countrywoman Sarah Schmelzel at -12, but the former started slowly, reeling off seven pars while Schmelzel hit the ground running with three birdies-in-a-row to quickly jump into a healthy lead. Two bogeys on four and six pegged her back, and though she’d birdie the eighth, she suddenly had company at the top once again as Tardy countered with eagle. All square after eight, Tardy suddenly had a two shot lead at the turn as she birdied and Schmelzel bogeyed.
Though Tardy would open the door again with a bogey at 10, as quickly as she’d opened it, she slammed it shut again equally rapid. Three birdies in-a-row and two more on 15 and 17 saw her cover the closing seven in -5 and the final 11 in -7, breaking her LPGA duck at the age of 27.
“Yeah, just through the beginning of the round I just kept telling myself to ‘stay patient, stay patient’.” Tardy said afterwards, “The holes that I play well are coming and my putts are going to fall.
“So I just kind of stuck to that, and then, yeah, my putt fell on eight. Yeah, I made two really good shots on No. 8 and then drained probably a 50-footer for eagle. Pretty exciting. Kind of like the floodgates opened after that. Made a lot of birdies after that.”
Maiden victories are always something to be savoured and have the potential to be life changing, and she now has job security and a schedule that she can pencil all the big events into, even if she’s unsure exactly what the win means in terms of opportunities.
“I don’t know what this does,” she admitted. “Tournament of Champions next year, that’s definitely something I’m excited and looking forward to. It’s kind of something that I was look at the girls this year playing and I wanted to be there. I’ll be there now.”
Schmelzel would hang on to take solo second at -15, with Ayaka Furue, who tied Tardy for low round of the day with her 65, climbing to take third place on her own at -14. Lydia Ko, Savannah Grewal and Minjee Lee all tied for fourth on -13, with China’s Ruixin Liu in solo seventh, one ahead of Meadow.
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