Lorena Ochoa and Heather Young share the second-round lead at the Kraft Nabisco Championship. Both players are at -5, one shot ahead of Maria Hjorth and Mi Hyun Kim. Hee-Won Han and Annika Sorenstam are tied for fifth, two strokes back.
Ochoa reached -7 after birdies at 10 and 11, taking a three-shot lead and making us all think “here we go again!”, but she came back to the field with bogeys at 12 and 15. Young began the day on the back nine at -3 but played her first three holes in +3. She birdied 17 and 18, then played the front side in 33 to reach -5. Hjorth’s only two bogeys on the day were at par-5s, oddly enough. Peanut was -5 until a bogey at 16 set her back. Sorenstam birdied three straight – 9 through 11 – to reach -4, lost one by three-putting at 12, then parred out. Han didn’t bogey until she took a 6 at 18. First-round leader Karen Stupples rode the big rollercoaster – four bogeys in her first six holes, three birdies out of four around the turn, then two bogeys down the stretch to finish at -2, tied for seventh. Michele Redman got to -4 for awhile but three bogeys dropped her back to -1, T11.
Ochoa’s back-nine struggle keeps many, many players in the hunt – although as Annika said after Thursday’s round, “I’m not here to hunt, I’m here to play”. 28 players are within six strokes (certainly doable) and 51 are within eight. Those who are more than ten behind are, unfortunately, going home – the cut was +5, knocking out Nicole Castrale, Jane Park, Catriona Matthew, Louise Friberg, Grace Park, Sherri Steinhauer, Laura Diaz, Christina Kim and Brittany Lincicome. The players who stumbled around Thursday but moved back onto the edge of the fray today include Diana D’Alessio, Inbee Park (both -1), Jee Young Lee, Seon Hwa Lee, Round-of-the-Day champ Moira Dunn (all even par), and Karrie Webb (+2).
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2 comments:
This is my first time on your site. It is good to know I can come here and get good information from another golf fan. I am wondering if you or any of your other readers are as disappointed in the ESPN coverage of the first 2 rounds of the Kraft Nabisco? I was really looking forward to seeing the ladies play and instead got to watch lots of scenery, a few interviews, and VERY few golf shots from some select players. Why can't we get the quality of coverage that is offered for men's events? How do we let the powers that be know we want less fluff? Thanks for listening.
dblady
I'm glad you found me, dblady. My regular readers know I call out the TV people pretty often - I doubt they read my stuff but venting makes me feel better. I completely agree with your assessment of ESPN's coverage. Unfortunately, that seems to be their standard way of doing women's golf. They cater too much to the casual fan - too much info we've already heard or read about and way too many package pieces while they could be showing the action. Golf Channel does a much better job with the LPGA but they also focus too much on the same players (Creamer, Ochoa, Gulbis, Pressel, etc).
I've considered the possibility that since the LPGA pays the networks for most of the coverage, they are also calling the shots on content to some extent. If so, they aren't selling their product as well as they could.
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