MasterCard Classic – 1st Round

Jill McGill eagled her final hole of the day – the par-5 9th – to take a one shot lead at the MasterCard Classic. Ji-Young Oh and Yani Tseng are tied for second after their rounds of 68 while Eva Dahllof and Amy Yang are tied for fourth another shot back.

The leaderboard is NOT what I expected. Let’s start with the notable scores:
70 Gloria Park, Candie Kung, Pat Hurst, Eunjung Yi
71 Jeong Jang, Laura Diaz, Carin Koch, Jacqueline Yang
72 Louise Friberg, Il Mi Chung, Moira Dunn, Jane Park
72 Brandie Burton, Wendy Ward, Teresa Lu
73 Stacy Prammanasudh, Anna Rawson, Taylor Leon
73 Eun-Hee Ji, Erica Blasberg, Na On Min
74 Seon Hwa Lee, In-Kyung Kim, Meena Lee
74 Ashleigh Simon, Julieta Granada, Kim Hall
75 Michelle McGann, Jimin Kang, Song-Hee Kim
76 Lorena Ochoa, Laura Davies, Angela Stanford
76 Jee Young Lee, Lorie Kane, Shanshan Feng
77 Hee Young Park, Nancy Scranton
78 Hee-Won Han, Minea Blomqvist, Brittany Lang

That’s right – Ochoa shot 76, thanks to six bogeys (four on the back nine). She is T77, nine shots behind with two rounds to go. Like Chuck Berry once said, “You Never Can Tell”, but that runaway victory we were all figuring on is not going to happen. The poor rounds by most of the nine Top 30 members (only three of them broke par Friday) accentuates the weirdness of this leaderboard. The scoring was higher than I predicted even though conditions were apparently good (no mention of wind or anything in the post-round interviews).

Jill McGill is leading an event for the first time since the 2004 Wachovia. Ji-Young Oh had a couple of flashes last year – sixth at the Safeway Classic is her best career finish. Yani Tseng and Amy Yang are rookies. Yang is making her first start of the season and the fifth of her career while Dahllof has been around since 1993 with a T6 her best career finish. Could Eva be this year’s Silvia Cavalleri – overcome a depleted-field Mexican event to register the Fluke Victory of the Year?

The Constructivist pointed out at Mostly Harmless that ESPN Deportes is showing coverage today and tomorrow, if any of your cable or satellite systems carry it. I'll be following the spastic leaderboard at lpga.com again.