Fields Open – 1st Round

Jeong Jang tied the tournament record with a 64 to take a two-stroke lead at the Fields Open. Paula Creamer is alone in second place while Kelli Kuehne and Angela Stanford are tied for third after rounds of 67.

I love it when I’m right! Scoring was low, low, low – 30 players in the 60s, 61 broke par and only 57 players shot over par. Conditions are expected to stay the same, so don’t be surprised if -1 isn’t good enough to make the cut. Notable scores:

68 Yani Tseng, Hee-Won Han, Maria Hjorth
68 Se Ri Pak, Moira Dunn, Dina Ammaccapane
69 Michelle Wie, Brittany Lincicome, Angela Park
70 Annika Sorenstam, Stacy Prammanasudh, Morgan Pressel
70 Eun-Hee Ji, Seon Hwa Lee, Nicole Castrale
71 Sherri Steinhauer, Laura Diaz
72 Suzann Pettersen, Momoko Ueda, Pat Hurst, Jee Young Lee
73 Natalie Gulbis, Cristie Kerr
74 Ai Miyazato, Sophie Gustafson, Grace Park, In-Kyung Kim
78 Michelle McGann

Jang missed a three-footer to bogey her first hole of the day, then rang up four straight birdies and nine birdies total to tie the record set by Lorena Ochoa in 2006. Se Ri Pak started off like gangbusters (-4 through six holes) but stalled out when she started missing her shots to the right. That’s not a typo – Michelle Wie shot 69, despite hitting only six fairways and nine greens in regulation. It was her first sub-70 round since the final round at Evian in 2006, 19 months ago.

I didn’t list her above but Liz Janangelo posted a 68, and during her post-round interview gave us a good indication that a lot of players noticed Angela Park’s slow-play penalty last week:
Q. Speaking of boring, was it nice to have a little bit of separation between you and the group in front of you?
LIZ JANANGELO: I know. I can't believe how quickly they were moving. I would assume they all played very well to move that quickly. We were running between shots and just wanted to keep up because we didn't want to get on the clock. It's early on the season and we don't want to be on the clock seven or eight times.

And playing faster didn't seem to hurt the scoring. Speaking of Angela, she appears to have moved past that incident in a good humor. Larry at LifeOnTour posted a Photo-Shopped picture with Park’s face on top of a slug. Angela now proudly displays it on her cell phone.