HAENAM, South Korea (AP) \u2014 Hye-Jin Choi had an eagle and seven birdies on her first 11 holes Saturday on a rain-soaked Pine Beach Golf Links to shoot a 6-under 66 and move into a tie for second place after three rounds of the LPGA South Korea tournament.<\/p>\n
Second-round leader Haeran Ryu, who birdied her last three holes, still led the tournament by four strokes after a 4-under 68 and a three-round total of 17-under 199.<\/p>\n
Choi shot 28 on her front nine and was 9-under before she bogeyed the par-5 12th after hitting into a fairway bunker. She made a double-bogey seven on the 17th after missing an eight-foot par putt after hitting into hazard off the green with her fairway wood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a really good score on the front nine. I felt good about my ball-striking early on, so I was able to play confidently and make a lot of birdie putts, which helped,\u201d Choi said. \u201cI\u2019m a little disappointed with how I played on the back nine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steady rain forced course officials to use roller squeegees to remove water from the greens. Most of the final groups took six hours to complete their rounds.<\/p>\n
Minji Park shot 65 and was also tied for second with Choi and Yuri Yoshida (68).<\/p>\n
Choi is still looking for her first victory in 125 career LPGA Tour starts as a member. She has held or shared a 54-hole lead five times in her LPGA career without converting it into a win.<\/p>\n
Last week in Shanghai, Choi was runner-up by one stroke to China\u2019s Ruoning Yin after the South Korean golfer led after each of the first three rounds.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Sei Young Kim, who ended a five-year victory drought in 2025 with a win last year in South Korea, shot 77 Saturday and was at even par.<\/p>\n
In its late-season Asian swing, the LPGA Tour moves to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia next week for the Maybank Championship, the third of four events. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full golf coverage here <\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAENAM, South Korea (AP) \u2014 Hye-Jin Choi had an eagle and seven birdies on her first 11 holes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-944672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}