A shot at three-straight titles has Hannah Green feeling the heat after the world No.7 moved two strokes clear of the field at the midway point of the Australian WPGA Championship.<\/p>\n
The in-form West Australian rolled on at Gold Coast’s Sanctuary Cove on Friday, shooting an eventful four-under 67 to sit alone at 10 under entering the weekend.<\/p>\n
It follows a breakthrough triumph at the Australian Open in Adelaide last Sunday and victory at Singapore’s Women’s World Championship, her seventh LPGA title.<\/p>\n
Victory at the $600,000 event would secure a unique Australian golfing double, given the Karrie Webb Cup has only been contested once before.<\/p>\n
“I’m probably putting more pressure on myself as I am obviously on such a hot run,” Green said.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps if I didn’t win the last two events, I would maybe fly under the radar a little bit more.<\/p>\n
“We still have a really strong Ladies European Tour (LET) field, so it’s not like I have it easy this weekend.<\/p>\n
“There’s going to be a lot of good players … chasing me and probably have less pressure on themselves.”<\/p>\n
Bogey-free on Thursday, Green’s second round was far more colourful as she mixed six birdies and an eagle with a double bogey and another dropped shot.<\/p>\n
She had three birdies in four holes to jump clubhouse leader Meghan MacLaren (eight under) before finding the water on the par-three sixth and carding a five.<\/p>\n
But Green responded by putting her second shot on the par-five seventh within eight feet of the flag and nailing the eagle putt.<\/p>\n
Another long-range birdie putt on the 13th edged Green further ahead, although Germany’s Alexandra Forsterling holed a monster of her own on 18 to card a five-under 66 and finish three back.<\/p>\n
“It was definitely a roller-coaster … hopefully I can go back to playing a bit more boring golf,” Green said, despite admitting she would continue playing “aggressively as possible”.<\/p>\n
England’s MacLaren (68) held onto second while Harang Lee, Alessandra Fanali, Vanessa Knecht and Casandra Alexander were a shot adrift of Forsterling at six under.<\/p>\n
MacLaren will embrace the chance to chase down major champion Green, who has skipped a lucrative LPGA event to compete, on Australian soil.<\/p>\n
“Whenever you bring that (a major winner) to an LET event, I think it just elevates the whole thing,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s really nice to see them support their own country and their own tour … It’s inspiring for everybody on the LET to go, ‘That’s the level and can we compete?’.<\/p>\n
“There’s probably a fair bit of pressure on them to come and perform here, so I think they deserve a load of credit for being here.”<\/p>\n
Aussie Hannah Reeves backed up her first-round 67 with 70 to sit at five under, while compatriot Sarah Kemp was a shot further back.<\/p>\n
But LPGA talent Steph Kyriacou’s tough run continued, missing the two-over cut line by five shots after also missing the cut in Adelaide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A shot at three-straight titles has Hannah Green feeling the heat after the world No.7 moved two strokes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-552705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552705","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=552705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}