A new mental approach and stunning run of consistency has suddenly turned Australian golfer Karis Davidson into a major contender as fights near the top of the leaderboard at the KPMG Women\u2019s PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
The world No.71 from the Gold Coast fired eight birdies on her way to a stunning seven-under par 65, just two shots behind first round leader Ina Yoon of South Korea who fired a record-equalling 63.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Davidson arrived at Hazeltine National Golf Club after a career-best major result of tied-22nd at the US Women\u2019s Open three weeks ago and a tied-12th at last week\u2019s Meijer LPGA Classic.<\/p>\n
Davidson has made the cut in all 10 of her LPGA tour starts this season and is feeling confident about her form as she looks to become the fifth Australian – after Jan Stephenson, Karrie Webb, Hannah Green and defending champion Minjee Lee – to win the PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
Davidson said a new mental approach had given her the self-belief to compete on the biggest stages.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been working on myself,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMentally finding out what I enjoy off the course I think has really helped me on the course, because now I feel like I can enjoy it more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just know there is more to life than just golf, so I think that\u2019s given me a really good perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m on the course I can just enjoy it. If it\u2019s a bad day, it\u2019s a bad day. If it\u2019s a good day, really take it all in and really embrace it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty special to be up top after day one, so I\u2019m just going to embrace it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davidson started from the 10th tee and had a bogey-free back nine, including three birdies in succession from the 15th to 17th.<\/p>\n
Her only bogey of the round came at the par-4 sixth, but she rebounded quickly to drain a long 35-foot birdie putt on the seventh.<\/p>\n
\u201cPutting was pretty on today,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really felt like I was going to hole everything, so it was a pretty perfect round.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davidson sits just two shots off the lead, while world No.1 Nelly Korda\u2019s quest to win a third straight major title hit a hurdle as she sat seven shots off the pace after a double bogey on the 16th.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly just made one bad swing, which ended up in a double,\u201d said Korda.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s defending champion Lee shot a one-under par 71, to be six shots off the pace in a tie for 26th. <\/p>\n
Hannah Green, who won her first major title at this course in 2019, was one shot further back after an even-par 72 to be tied with fellow Australian major champion Grace Kim and Robyn Choi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new mental approach and stunning run of consistency has suddenly turned Australian golfer Karis Davidson into a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-760962","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\/760962","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=760962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}