HONOLULU — Akie Iwai shot an 8-under 64 in calm morning conditions Wednesday at Hoakalei Country Club to take the first-round lead in the LPGA Tour’s Lotte Championship.<\/p>\n
She played alongside twin sister Chisato.<\/p>\n
“It was fun,” Akie said. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow, too.”<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Japanese sisters have each won this year as tour rookies. Chisato broke through at Mayakoba in Mexico in May, and Akie won the Portland Classic in August.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Akie birdied three of the first four holes. Then, after making six birdies in a nine-hole span, she closed with a bogey on the par-3 ninth. Chisati opened with a 70.<\/p>\n
Fellow Japanese player Nasa Hataoka was a stroke at back at 65 with Gabriela Ruffels of Australia and Peiyun Chien of Taiwan.<\/p>\n
“We played at 7:30 this morning and the wind wasn’t up,” Ruffels said. “I feel like the defense of this golf course is the wind, so having an afternoon tee time tomorrow, I feel like it’s going to be a bit trickier and it might be tougher to shoot a lower number.”<\/p>\n
Defending champion A Lim Kim of South Korea had the best round of the afternoon session, making four straight birdies on the back nine in a 66. Thai players Patty Tavatanakit and Pornanong Phatlum shot 66 in the morning.<\/p>\n
Nelly Korda opened with a 69 in the afternoon, birdieing the first three holes, then offsetting two bogeys with two birdies the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
“A little bit of an up-and-down round, but overall, happy to get it in at 3-under par,” Korda said. “Definitely have a long way to go to get in contention.”<\/p>\n
Coming off a seven-victory season, she hasn’t won this year and has lost her No. 1 ranking to Jeeno Thitikul. The tour has had a different winner in all 24 of its official tournaments this year.<\/p>\n
Charley Hull matched playing partner Korda with a 69. Hull won the Kroger Queen City Championship three weeks ago in Ohio after Thitikul four-putted the final hole.<\/p>\n
Brooke Henderson, the 2018 and 2019 winner at Ko Olina, shot 70 in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
After the event, the LPGA heads to Asia for tournaments five straight weeks in Shanghai, South Korea, Malaysia and Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU — Akie Iwai shot an 8-under 64 in calm morning conditions Wednesday at Hoakalei Country Club to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-197656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}