Sei Young Kim, one of 22 home hopes in the 78-player field, set a cracking pace with a 10-under-par 62 at the beautiful Pines Beach Golf Links on the Republic’s windswept south-west coast on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The LPGA Tour’s 2020 player of the year and former major champion bagged eight birdies and an eagle in a flawless first round to grab a one-shot lead over fellow South Korean Korean Hyo Joo Kim.<\/p>\n
“So this is near my home town, so I have lots of family, my cousins, a lot of fans. So I had a great start from the first hole and all the way through 18th hole, getting a lot of support,” Kim said.<\/p>\n
“The course is absolutely wonderful. The layout and the conditions of the course were great.<\/p>\n
“Of course the victory is my aim. It has been a while. I really want to take a challenge.<\/p>\n
“Last year I was getting closer, but hopefully with the support I get in my home town, I will get nearer to victory.”<\/p>\n
American Lindy Duncan is outright third at eight under, one stroke ahead of Thai Chanettee Wannasaen, Japan’s Rio Takeda and US player Brooke Matthews.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Hannah Green, in-form world No.3 Minjee Lee and Steph Kyriacou are the best of the Australians, six shots back at four under after opening with 68s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After missing five cuts in her past six starts, Green launched her title defence with birdies on the first two holes.<\/p>\n
Playing alongside Lee, Green stumbled with a bogey on the fifth hole before reigniting her round on the back nine.<\/p>\n
She conjured the up-and-down of the day with a sand save from 40 metres at the picture-postcard par-3 15th hole before draining an eagle on the 17th shoot up the leaderboard. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fresh off her third-place showing last week in Shanghai, Lee joined Green and Kyriacou in a share of 21st spot with six birdies and two bogeys in her first round.<\/p>\n
Kyriacou had four birdies in a bogey-free start to the $US2.3 million tournament.<\/p>\n
Fellow Australians Cassie Porter (69), Robyn Choi (70) are also in red figures.<\/p>\n
But 2025 major winner Grace Kim and Gabriela Ruffels, both an even-par 72s, and Karis Davidson (73) will start the second round of the no-cut event some 10 and 11 shots adrift of the leader respectively. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sei Young Kim, one of 22 home hopes in the 78-player field, set a cracking pace with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-217379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}