Not for the first time, Lee and Kyriacou rallied brilliantly to recover from two holes down with seven to play to beat Chinese pair Yan Liu and Weiwei Zhang 2 up in Friday’s crucial opening four-ball match.<\/p>\n
With teammates Hannah Green and Grace Kim narrowly losing to former world No.1 Ruoning Yin and Ruixin Liu on the 18th hole, Australia split the points 1-1 for the second day running in Seoul.<\/p>\n
And once again Lee and Kyriacou’s precious point could prove telling entering Saturday’s final pool matches.<\/p>\n
The top-seeded United States lived up to their favouritism to be the only team to secure a spot in Sunday’s semi-finals after recording a second straight 2-0 win.<\/p>\n
Friday’s victims were defending champions Thailand, with Angel Yin and Yealimi Noh inflicting a first defeat in seven Crown outings on world No.1 Jeeno Thitikul.<\/p>\n
Yin and Noh crushed Thitikul and Pajaree Anannarukarn 5 & 4, while Lauren Coughlin and Lilia Vu beat Chanettee Wannasaen and Jasmine Suwannapura 3 & 2 to propel the USA to the top of Pool A with a perfect four points.<\/p>\n
Australia (two points) are second in Pool A ahead of a showdown with the Americans on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Runners-up to Thailand at the 2023 edition of the prestigious biennial event, the Australians likely need to win one of their remaining two four-ball matches to book a semis berth.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be pretty exciting. I think we have a good chance come tomorrow, and hopefully we can put up a good show,” Lee said.<\/p>\n
With one point each, Thailand and China will clash in the other Pool A tie knowing only a 2-0 victory will guarantee semi-final qualification for either side.<\/p>\n
Australia being in the box seat to progress seemed unlikely when Lee and Kyriacou were staring down a two-hole deficit early on the back nine at New Korea Country Club.<\/p>\n
But four birdies from world No.3 Lee dragged the dynamite duo into the lead, before Kyriacou sealed victory on the 17th hole.<\/p>\n
“We struggled a little bit in the start. Our games were a little bit off to start the day, and kind of came around maybe middle of the back nine,” Lee said.<\/p>\n
The pair are now four from five together in the competition.<\/p>\n
Lydia Ko’s Team World are in pole position to progress from Pool B after downing third-seeded hosts Korea 1.5 to 0.5 to climb to the top of the group with three points.<\/p>\n
Charley Hull drained a birdie at the last for the Englishwoman and Kiwi Ko to edge Hyo Joo Kim and Hye-Jin Choi 1 up, after Brooke Henderson’s clutch putting helped the Canadian and Taiwan’s Wei-Ling Hsu to square their match with Jin Young Ko and Haeran Ryu.<\/p>\n
Japan and Sweden both have 1.5 points after splitting their tie 1-1 on Friday.<\/p>\n
Miyu Yamashita and Rio Takeda earned second seeds Japan their first full point of the week with a 3 & 2 victory over Madelene Sagstrom and Ingrid Lindblad.<\/p>\n
Sweden replied when Maja Stark and Linn Grant beat Ayaka Furue and Mao Saigo 3 & 2, leaving Sweden needing to topple Team World and Japan to defeat Korea on Saturday to have a hope of making the semis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not for the first time, Lee and Kyriacou rallied brilliantly to recover from two holes down with seven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-237124","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\/237124","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=237124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}