KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Girls’s Open winner Miyu Yamashita of Japan has gained the LPGA’s Maybank Championship in a three-way playoff Sunday for her second profession title in solely her first full 12 months on the tour.
The 24-year-old golfer sealed the victory with a birdie on the primary playoff gap, whereas three-round chief Hye-Jin Choi of South Korea and Australia’s Hannah Inexperienced may handle solely pars. The win provides the Maybank title to Yamashita’s first main triumph in August.
The Japanese participant matched the day’s lowest spherical of 65 to swiftly climb up a congested leaderboard to 18-under 270 on the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Nation Membership course.
Choi, who started the ultimate spherical with a four-stroke lead, struggled to transform key putts as her benefit slipped away.
The 26-year-old Choi now has 29 profession top-10 finishes however has but to search out her breakthrough win on the tour. It is also the third time she has led a match heading into the ultimate spherical and completed runner-up.
Inexperienced, a member of the profitable Australia group on the Worldwide Crown final weekend, shot a streaky 68 — with seven birdies and three bogies — which included a nerveless birdie on the final to affix Choi and Yamashita within the playoff.
World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul (68), China’s Liu Yan (65), Akie Iwai (67) of Japan and South Korean pair A Lim Kim (68) and Kim Sei-Younger (66) have been all tied for fourth place at 17 below, one shot behind the main trio.
Thitikul, a runner-up in Malaysia the previous two years, had a bogey on the sixteenth that ended the Thai participant’s late cost for a breakthrough win in Kuala Lumpur.
An hourlong delay due to rain after the leaders had made the flip added to the stress on a congested leaderboard. When play resumed, Choi discovered her manner again into rivalry with a clutch birdie on the par-4 sixteenth that had simply sufficient tempo to drop in.
Inexperienced then joined Choi and Yamashita within the playoff earlier than one other rain bathe delayed the playoff for greater than half-hour.
Defending champion Yin Ruoning shot 70 for a Twelfth-place end at 14-under 274, 4 strokes behind.
Brooke Henderson additionally shot 70 and was tied for twenty seventh.
Subsequent week, the LPGA ends its five-week Asian swing with the Japan Basic at Shiga.
