NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. \u2014 Lauren Coughlin continued her strong play at Shadow Creek even in windy conditions Friday that played havoc with the second-round scores at the Aramco Championship to shoot a 3-under 69 and open a five-shot lead.<\/p>\n
Coughlin was 8 under. Hyo Joo Kim kept alive her hopes for a third straight LPGA Tour tournament victory, shooting 73 to match Leona Maguire (71) at 3 under.<\/p>\n
Coughlin entered the day in a three-way tie for the lead after opening with a 67, but now has created clear separation. She nearly won here last year when it was a match-play event before falling to Madelene Sagstrom in the final pairing.<\/p>\n
Now Coughlin is close again. Even with a sizable lead, though, she isn\u2019t ready to celebrate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of golf to be played,\u201d Coughlin said. \u201cAs you can see, you can make big numbers really easily. So just try to stick to what I\u2019ve been doing the last two days and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wind gusts of 20 mph and higher made for a difficult round. A day after 26 players posted red numbers, that total was 11 on Friday, making the picturesque but demanding course almost hidden from the lights of the Las Vegas Strip even more difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost bordering on a U.S. Open-style setup,\u201d Maguire said. \u201cYou see how few people are under par. It feels a little bit like a major without being a major.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miyu Yamashita got to experience that full effect. Sitting at 5 under with two holes to play, she went in the water on the par-3 17th and then took three shots to get on the green. The triple bogey put her at 2 under with second-ranked Nelly Korda (74) and Nanna Koerstz Madsen (70).<\/p>\n
Korda, who won this event two years ago, struggled over the final nine in the second round. She bogeyed two holes and had a double on the par-4 first.<\/p>\n
The top 20 players in the world signed up for the Aramco Championship, no doubt attracted to the $4 million purse in the first year that this tournament is strictly stroke play. This event is co-sanctioned with the Ladies European Tour.<\/p>\n
Coughlin birdied Nos. 7, 8, 10 and 12, holing a 50-foot putt on No. 8. But she bogeyed the par-4 14th and 15th to halt her momentum and bring her back to the field. Coughlin then rolled in a 25-foot putt on the par-5 16th for an especially timely birdie.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, definitely kind of helped smooth things out there towards the end,\u201d Coughlin said. \u201cFelt like I was playing good, especially those two holes before that. I think the easiest way to describe this golf course, especially when it gets windy, it\u2019s so easy to make bogey. One little thing and you\u2019re making bogey. Maybe even worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amelia Garvey made the largest leap, answering an opening 79 with a 69 even with a triple bogey on the par-3 17th. That got her to 4 over, enough to make the cut of 7 over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually played really well yesterday,\u201d Garvey said. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t putt. Was putting a bit like Stevie Wonder out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. \u2014 Lauren Coughlin continued her strong play at Shadow Creek even in windy conditions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-584403","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\/584403","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=584403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}