Irish interest at the Ford Championship came to an end as Leona Maguire and Lauren Walsh both missed the cut, while Nelly Korda holds a two-shot lead at Whirlwind Golf Club in Arizona after a seven-under-par 65 saw her reach 16 under at the halfway point.<\/p>\n
Maguire’s stalling 72 meant the Cavan woman finished on four under, missing the cut by a single shot.<\/p>\n
Walsh also registered a 72, which took her to one under, as the 25-year-old failed to make the cut in a second consecutive LPGA Tour event.<\/p>\n
Korda’s round, which featured an eagle, marked her career-best 36-hole score.<\/p>\n
She is two shots ahead of defending champion Hyo Joo Kim, as the South Korean followed her opening 61 with a 69.<\/p>\n
New Zealand’s Lydia Ko, the first-round leader after a career-low round of 60, stumbled to 71 and is in a tie for third place at 13 under.<\/p>\n
Also at 13 under are Jenny Bae, who carded a 65 on Friday, and Japan’s Minami Katsu, who produced a 66 in the second round.<\/p>\n
Korda, who won the Phoenix-area tournament two years ago at a different course, made four birdies on the front nine and had her lone bogey of the day at the par-three sixth hole. She was still three under for the day before reaching the green in two on the par-five 12th hole and sinking a long eagle putt.<\/p>\n
She added two more birdies before closing with consecutive pars.<\/p>\n
“Overall hit it really good off the tee,” said Korda, who earned her 16th career LPGA win last month at the Tournament of Champions. “Took advantage where I could. Rolled in a nice eagle, too.<\/p>\n
“Hit it nicely into the par-fives, which obviously is an advantage out here. But overall, you know, just I would say I have no complaints, yeah.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish interest at the Ford Championship came to an end as Leona Maguire and Lauren Walsh both missed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-499912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499912","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=499912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}