The 23-year-old Sydneysider was in for a rough day after making two bogeys in her opening three holes, before fighting back with three birdies to join the biggest names in women’s golf in the field.<\/p>\n
Porter’s one-under 69 moved her into a tie for ninth, alongside world No.1 Nelly Korda and No.2 Jeeno Thitikul, and they are all now just three behind co-leaders Ina Yoon, Chella Choi and Rio Takeda.<\/p>\n
Choi bogeyed her final two holes, blemishing an otherwise flawless round.<\/p>\n
Korda had 15 pars in her bid to win a third-straight tournament. Korda won The Chevron Championship for her third major and the following week in Mexico before taking last week off.<\/p>\n
Thitikul, who won last week in the Mizuho Americas Open, also shot a 69. It was the same score as Korda, but achieved far differently.<\/p>\n
Korda had two birdies against one bogey at Maketewah Country Club, in its first year hosting the LPGA Tour event. Thitikul had five pars, seven birdies and six bogeys.<\/p>\n
Choi was at six-under until her foot slipped on a shot at No.8, leading to her first bogey. She failed to get up-and-down from a bunker on the long par-3 ninth, her final hole.<\/p>\n
“Super-hard golf course,” Choi said. “Fairways very narrow and the green is … green in not flag, like so many bumps here.”<\/p>\n
Jin Young Ko and Lilia Vu, both with multiple majors in their careers, were at 67. Another shot behind were Lydia Ko and Charley Hull.<\/p>\n
Lydia Ko was in a group with Korda and Thitikul.<\/p>\n
“Somebody asked me who I was playing and I was like, ‘I’m playing with 1 and 2, and they’re almost like 1 and 1,'” Ko said. “I was thinking some part in my back nine how impressive they’ve played these last few years. I think that’s the most impressive thing.”<\/p>\n
“Jeeno, she’s won a couple times, but she also has put herself in contention a lot in the times she didn’t win,” she added. “Nelly hasn’t finished worse than second place this year. So it was cool to be out there with them.”<\/p>\n
Robyn Choi (71) and Hira Naveed (76) are the only other Australians in the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 23-year-old Sydneysider was in for a rough day after making two bogeys in her opening three holes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-672097","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\/672097","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=672097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}