Yamahita rebounded from a bogey on the par-3 17th with a birdie on the par-4 18th to get to 19-under 191 at Royal Mayfair, the tree-lined layout (and mosquito hot spot after record summer rain), tucked in a bend in the North Saskatchewan River.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old, one of professional golf’s shortest players at 491cm (4-foot-11), won the Meijer LPGA Classic in June in Michigan after taking the Women’s Open Championship and Maybank Championship last season as the rookie of the year.<\/p>\n
A stroke ahead Thursday after opening with a course-record 62, Yamashita had a 64 on Friday afternoon to open a five-shot lead.<\/p>\n
“I like this course,” Yamashita said through a translator. “I’m feeling so good out there.”<\/p>\n
American Gina Kim (64) and Japan’s Yuri Yoshida (66) were tied for second at 13-under, a shot ahead of Jennifer Kupcho (64) and two ahead of Somi Lee (65).<\/p>\n
Aphrodite Deng, the 16-year-old amateur who won the 2025 US Girls’ Junior, was the top Canadian, shooting 63 to get to 10-under and be tied for sixth.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t really counting how low I was shooting,” Deng said. “I was just trying to play as best as I can.”<\/p>\n
Cassie Porter (69) and Karis Davidson (70) were the leading Australians, tied 30th at four-under, with Robyn Choi (70) and Grace Kim (71) a further shot back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Canadian star Brooke Henderson, the 2018 and 2025 champion, was seven-under after a 68.<\/p>\n
“I hit 16 greens and gave myself a lot of good looks, so it’s disappointing to only shoot two-under,” said Henderson.<\/p>\n
Top-ranked Nelly Korda shot a 69 to get to four-under. Lydia Ko, the 2013 winner at Royal Mayfair as an amateur, was two-under after a 69.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yamahita rebounded from a bogey on the par-3 17th with a birdie on the par-4 18th to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-865243","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\/865243","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=865243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}