Hyo Joo Kim has doubled her lead to four strokes at the midway point of the LPGA Tour’s Founders Cup, capping a late afternoon rally with a six-foot birdie putt on the par-3 eighth.<\/p>\n
But there are three Australians within reach with two rounds to play.<\/p>\n
Karis Davidson (68) and Minjee Lee (70) are five off the pace at six under, along with five others, while compatriot Robyn Choi (68) is five under.<\/p>\n
Lee closed Friday’s round with a bogey after making four straight birdies.<\/p>\n
“A little bit of things to clean up, but I think I’m in a pretty nice position going into the weekend,” she said.<\/p>\n
Aussies Cassie Porter (71) at four under and Grace Kim (70) one under also made the cut.<\/p>\n
A day after holing out for eagle on the par-5 18th hole for a nine-under 63 and a two-shot lead, South Korean Kim shot 70 in her afternoon round at tree-lined Sharon Heights.<\/p>\n
Mexican Gabby Lopez (70) is second at seven under, with top-ranked Jeeno Thitikul (66) of Thailand and American Nelly Korda (68) in the group another shot back.<\/p>\n
Playing the back nine first, Kim bogeyed Nos. 11 and 17, then rebounded with birdies on 18, one, three and eight.<\/p>\n
“The golf course is a bit hard,” Kim said.<\/p>\n
“The tee shots are hard to play and the shape of the course is a little tricky. I try my best to just try to do what I need to do.”<\/p>\n
Kim, the world No.8, won the 2015 Founders Cup in Phoenix for the second of her seven LPGA Tour titles.<\/p>\n
“It’s been so long,” Kim said about the 2015 victory.<\/p>\n
“I think I won my rookie year. It was an unforgettable memory because it was my first win as a LPGA member.”<\/p>\n
Coming off a third-place finish last month in Thailand, Kim is the defending champion next week in Arizona in the Ford Championship.<\/p>\n
Lopez had three front-nine birdies and dropped a stroke on the par-4 16th.<\/p>\n
Thitikul opened with a bogey and birdied five of the next seven. On the back nine, she birdied 12 and 18.<\/p>\n
Korda, who skipped the Asia swing after winning the season opener in Florida, had late birdies on Nos. 7 and 8.<\/p>\n
The tournament has attracted eight of the top 10 players in the world ranking and kicks off a four-tournament stretch in the West ahead of the first major of the year.<\/p>\n
With AAP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hyo Joo Kim has doubled her lead to four strokes at the midway point of the LPGA Tour’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-554378","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\/554378","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=554378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}