World number one Jeeno Thitikul carded a nine-under-par 63 to open up a three-shot lead after two rounds of the LPGA’s season-ending CME Group Tour Championship.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old from Thailand made four consecutive birdies either side of the turn in her bogey-free round to reach 14 under overall in Florida. <\/p>\n
Thitikul is aiming to win the most lucrative tournament in women’s golf – which has a top prize of $4m (\u00a33.1m) – for a second consecutive year.<\/p>\n
South Korea’s Kim Sei-young is at 11 under, while Japan’s Nasa Hataoka is a shot further back along with first-round leader Somi Lee. <\/p>\n
Home favourite Nelly Korda, who struggled on Thursday, is also firmly in contention after surging up the leaderboard with a 64. <\/p>\n
The two-time major champion, who has not won an event this season, made nine birdies including three in her final four holes to end Friday in a tie for fifth. <\/p>\n
Korda said some minor adjustments to her putting made the difference after she managed just three birdies on the opening day. <\/p>\n
“On Thursday I was just missing by centimetres,” Korda said. “They were burning edges, lipping out. <\/p>\n
“This has been kind of the common theme this year. I feel like I played so much better than my score has shown.<\/p>\n
“So I honestly just went to the putting green for five minutes and simplified it.”<\/p>\n
Denmark’s Nanna Koerstz Madsen is the highest placed European at eight under with England’s Charley Hull frustratingly making three bogeys alongside six birdies in her round of 69.<\/p>\n
It leaves England’s Hull at six under – eight shots adrift of Thitikul – with her compatriot Lottie Woad at five under.<\/p>\n
The LPGA’s concluding event of the season carries a total purse of $11m (\u00a38.4m).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Jeeno Thitikul carded a nine-under-par 63 to open up a three-shot lead after two rounds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-276348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}