Volume 5, Number 5, July 18, 2007 | ||||||||||||||
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2007 US Women's Open |
Pages 1,
2, 3,
Gallery1, Gallery2, Gallery3, Results |
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Early
in the day's action, In-Bee Park (pictured) made a move, eventually getting
to 3 under and a tie for the lead with Angela. With two Parks atop the
leaderboard, the commentators could not resist referring to the 'double
parked leaderboard'. In fact, the leaders had a lot in common: both were
18 years old, named Park, and had played on the Futures Tour in 2006.
A pretty unusual circumstance to be sure! Other Korean golfers who battled
early in the day for position on the leaderboard included Mi Hyun Kim,
Jeong Jang, and Jee Young Lee. Eventually, play was canceled outright at about 3:18 local time. Only
24 players were able to finish their second rounds, and several, including
Angela Park, never even got a chance to start. Indeed, no one who had
finished two rounds finished under par. The best score in the clubhouse
for those few who did finish was by In-Bee Park, whose two day total was
even par after she shot a 2 over par 73 in round two. More and more, the
event was starting to resemble the 2006 edition, which forced players
to play 36 grueling holes of golf on Sunday. Hopefully that would not
have to happen here, though. On
Saturday morning, the weather finally started to cooperate, and they were
able to get the second round finished without incident. However, they
were still several hours behind, and there was no way the third round
was going to get completed on Saturday even if the weather behaved. After
two rounds, Angela Park (pictured) had upped her lead to 5 under par following
a second round 69. That gave her a two stroke advantage over Julieta Granada
and three shots over Amy Hung and Ji Yai Shin. Angela was extremely impressive
in her final few holes of her second round. She made a nice birdie on
the 6th hole, then sank an incredible 30 foot birdie on 7 to move to 5
under. But the fun was just getting started. On 8, she put herself in
a bunker and made a nice eight foot par save to keep herself at 5 under.
But the save on nine made that one look easy: she dunked her par putt
from about 40 feet, with tons of break, into the bottom of the cup. When
you're hot, you're hot! Meanwhile, the cut fell, and several important Korean players got the
axe. Grace Park shot back to back 77's to miss the cut by a mile (the
cut fell at 6 over par). Vicky Hurst, Esther Choe and Kim Squared all
missed the cut as well, as did Sarah Lee, a player who came into the Open
playing quite well but who never recovered from an opening round 79. Michelle
Wie, meanwhile, dropped out of the event before she finished her second
round, the second time she had done that in her past three tournaments.
But though several important Koreans missed the cut, 26 did not. To put
this in perspective, only 25 Americans made the cut. It was the first
time in history that the US did not have the most players making the cut
at the Open. Another historic milestone achieved by the Seoul Sisters
(and keep in mind that the 26 who made the cut only includes Korean nationals,
not Korean Americans or people like Angela Park). Se
Ri Pak, meanwhile, picked her game up somewhat, shooting a one over par
72 to put herself at 4 over. She was well behind the rest of the field,
but was about to launch an epic attempt to get herself back into the competition. The
third round continued early Sunday morning, and shortly after it started,
Lorena Ochoa took over the lead at 5 under. Ji Yai had two early bogies
in her round and fell to 3 under. At 4 under were Angela Park (pictured),
Morgan Pressel and Cristie Kerr. For three days, various Korean golfers
had led the tournament, but suddenly there were only two even close to
the leaders. But there were nonetheless a number of Koreans a few shots
further back around one under, even or one over, including Se Ri, Jee
Young, In-Bee, Birdie, and Jeong Jang. If any of them could have a good
third or fourth round, there was still a possibility that a Seoul Sister
could hoist the trophy. |
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