South Korean star Kim played the first six holes in six-under on Saturday, before stalling at the tree-lined Sharon Heights course in California, leaving her with a five-stroke lead over American Nelly Korda as both shot six-under 66s.<\/p>\n
World No.8 Kim was at 17-under (199). She won the tournament in 2015 in Phoenix for the second of her seven LPGA Tour titles.<\/p>\n
Davidson shot a 69 to be tied for fifth at nine-under, with Robyn Choi (69) the next-best Australian a further shot back, while Minjee Lee (73) was at five-under and Cassie Porter (72) at four-under.<\/p>\n
Four shots ahead entering the day, Kim had four birdies and an eagle on the par-5 fifth in an opening burst which ended with a bogey on the par-5 seventh.<\/p>\n
Korda birdied 16 and 18 in a bogey-free 66. She skipped the Asia swing after winning the season opener in Florida.<\/p>\n
Ruixin Liu of China and Gaby Lopez of Mexico were tied third at 11-under. Liu eagled the fifth in a 66. Lopez had a 68 playing alongside Kim.<\/p>\n
Top-ranked Jeeno Thitikul (69) was nine-under along with Davidson, Erika Hara (67) and Hye-Jin Choi (69).<\/p>\n
The tournament began as a tribute to the 13 founders of the LPGA. It began in Arizona in 2011 and last year was the second event of the season and played in Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korean star Kim played the first six holes in six-under on Saturday, before stalling at the tree-lined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-556255","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\/556255","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=556255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}