On a Thursday when Japanese Akie Iwai roared into a two-shot lead with an eight-under 63, the distant Australian challenge at Evian-les-Bains was led by Cassie Porter, who still found herself six shots off the lead in joint-20th place after a two-under 69.<\/p>\n
She was a shot clear of Hannah Green, the former Women’s PGA champ, and Karis Davidson, who both fired 70s and were tied for 35th place.<\/p>\n
Yet Kim, whose incredible playoff triumph at the Evian Resort Club last year rocketed her into the major winners’ circle, simply never got going as she struggled with a two-over 73 that left her in joint 87th-position.<\/p>\n
For Australia’s three-time major champ Lee, winner of the Evian in 2021, it turned into an even worse day, as she opened with a six-over par 77 which may well have scuppered her chances already. Her round featured a double-bogey and a triple.<\/p>\n
A year after producing one of the great fightbacks in golf annals to land her maiden major with an incredible eagle-birdie-eagle finish, Kim was going nicely at two-under when she too served up a triple-bogey seven at the par-four 12th and then coughed up a couple more sixes on the long 15th and 18th holes. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Iwai, though, made birdies on three of the last four holes, including the par-five 18th, to lead by two from Perrine Delacour, whose six-under 65 included an eagle at the par-five 15th and a pair of bogeys toward the end of her round.<\/p>\n
“I was able to have a good focus on my golf and stay committed. \u200cI prepared a lot around the green with chipping and putting. I was driving well, but honestly, everything was good,” Iwai said.<\/p>\n
“I like driver, so if \u200cI’m good and consistent with my driver, it helps. I made the good score. I like this course; it’s similar to a course in Japan.”<\/p>\n
A group of five players with five-under 66s included the winner of the Women’s PGA Championship two weeks ago, Haeran Ryu, and world No.5 Charley Hull, who started the week as a guest in the Royal Box at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
However, like Lee, world No.1 Nelly Korda, who won the first two majors this season, the Chevron Championship and the U.S Open, had a bad day, finding herself 11 shots back with a three-over 74, including a double-bogey six at her first hole, the 10th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a Thursday when Japanese Akie Iwai roared into a two-shot lead with an eight-under 63, the distant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-791189","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\/791189","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=791189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}