Somi Lee fires 64, leads LPGA Tour season finale

NAPLES, Fla. — Somi Lee determined to alter her placing grip and it paid off in an enormous approach Thursday within the CME Group Tour Championship, because the South Korean opened with an 8-under 64 for a two-shot lead within the chase for a $4 million payoff.

Lee started to tug away when she went down one membership to a 5-iron due to the nice and cozy circumstances and arrange an eagle on the par-5 seventeenth. Her solely lapse was an extended three-putt bogey on the closing gap at Tiburon Golf Membership.

Even so, she was two photographs away from former U.S. Ladies’s Open champion Allisen Corpuz.

Jeeno Thitikul, the No. 1 participant and front-runner for LPGA participant of the 12 months, had six birdies in her spherical of 67, tied with three different gamers. Thitikul gained the Tour Championship final 12 months, and can win the points-based participant of the 12 months until Miyu Yamashita of Japan wins this event.

Yamashita, whose two victories this 12 months embody the Ladies’s Open, was slowed by two bogeys and opened with a 70.

Nelly Korda, making an attempt to keep away from a winless 12 months after seven titles a 12 months in the past, missed a 3-foot birdie putt on the seventeenth in a ho-hum spherical of 71.

Lee was amongst 29 gamers who gained this 12 months on the LPGA, teaming with Jin Hee Im within the Dow Championship. She was 14th within the Race to CME Globe, a strong 12 months, however she felt she was held again by her placing. That is when she observed Lydia Ko, the newest LPGA Corridor of Fame member.

“I simply adopted Lydia Ko’s putter grip as a result of she’s a superb participant and I assumed, ‘Why not observe a superb participant’s putter grip?’ It labored rather well,” Lee mentioned.

She tried it final week, made just a few tweaks and was rolling on the Tour Championship, taking solely 27 putts within the spherical.

The highest 60 reached the season finale, and Race to CME Globe rankings are now not related. Whoever wins the event will get $4 million — the richest prize in ladies’s golf — from the $11 million purse.

“I do know like we’re enjoying for $4 million test, however to me I believe it is similar to virtually a bonus for me this sort of 12 months to have the ability to play right here,” Thitikul mentioned. “I’ve been on a very good run for the 12 months, nothing to consider that a lot.”

Thitikul was in a tie for third with Im, Nasa Hataoka and Sei-young Kim. A pair of main champions, Grace Kim (Evian Championship) and Minjee Lee (Ladies’s PGA) have been within the group at 68.