KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia \u2014 Women\u2019s British Open winner Miyu Yamashita of Japan won the LPGA\u2019s Maybank Championship in a three-way playoff Sunday for her second career title in only her first full year on the tour.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old golfer sealed victory with a birdie on the first playoff hole, while three-round leader Hye-Jin Choi of South Korea and Australia\u2019s Hannah Green could only manage pars. The win adds the Maybank title to Yamashita\u2019s maiden major triumph in August.<\/p>\n
The Japanese player carded the day\u2019s equal lowest round of 65 to swiftly climb up a congested leaderboard to 18-under 270 at the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country club course.<\/p>\n
Choi, who began the final round with a four-stroke lead, struggled to convert key putts as her advantage slipped away.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old Choi now has 29 career top-10 finishes, but is yet to find her breakthrough win on the tour. It\u2019s also the third time she has led a tournament heading into the final round and finished runner-up.<\/p>\n
Green, a member of the winning Australia team at the International Crown last weekend, shot a streaky 68 \u2014 with seven birdies and three bogies \u2014 which included a nerveless birdie at the last to join Choi and Yamashita in the playoff.<\/p>\n
World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul (68), China\u2019s Liu Yan (65), Akie Iwai (67) of Japan and South Korean pair A Lim Kim (68) and Kim Sei-Young (66) were all tied for fourth-place at 17 under, one shot behind the leading trio.<\/p>\n
Thitikul, a runner-up in Malaysia the last two years, had a bogey on the 16th that ended the Thai player\u2019s late charge for a breakthrough win in Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n
Earlier, an hour-long delay because of rain after the leaders had made the turn added to the tension on a congested leaderboard. When play resumed, Choi found her way back into contention with a clutch birdie at the par-4 16th that had just enough pace to drop in.<\/p>\n
Green then joined Choi and Yamashita in the playoff before another rain shower delayed the playoff for more than 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Yin Ruoning shot 70 for a 12th-place finish at 14-under 274, four strokes behind.<\/p>\n
Brooke Henderson also shot 70 and was tied for 27th.<\/p>\n
Next week, the LPGA ends its five-week Asian swing with the Japan Classic at Shiga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia \u2014 Women\u2019s British Open winner Miyu Yamashita of Japan won the LPGA\u2019s Maybank Championship in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-257505","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\/257505","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=257505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}