England’s Charley Hull sits two shots off the lead after the opening round of the LPGA’s Maybank Championship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
France’s Pauline Roussin-Bouchard birdied her final three holes at the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club for an 8-under 64 and a one-stroke outright lead.
Roussin-Bouchard, whose rookie season on the tour was 2022, is still looking for her first LPGA win and has three top-10 finishes.
American Sophia Schubert, who also joined the tour in 2022 and has no wins and three career top-10 finishes, was tied for second place after a 65 with Miyu Yamashita, who won last year’s Malaysian tournament after a three-way play-off.
Another French player, Perrine Delacour, shot 66 and was tied for fourth with Hull, who birdied two of her final three holes
Haeran Ryu, a major winner this year at the Women’s PGA Championship and at the Evian Championship, withdrew before her first-round tee time for an undisclosed reason. She was the highest-ranked player in the tournament in the absence of No 1 Nelly Korda and No 2 Jeeno Thitikul.
Last week, Yuri Yoshida won the BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea, the fourth Japanese player this season to win on the LPGA Tour, joining Yamashita, Shiho Kuwaki and Yuna Nishimura. Yoshida had a 69 Thursday.
Among the hazards at the Kuala Lumpur layout was the sight, captured on the television coverage, of a 3-meter (10-foot) monitor lizard eating a smaller animal near one of the lakes on the course.
The LPGA Tour’s four-week late-season Asian swing ends next week with the Toto Japan Classic at Omitama outside Tokyo
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: skynews.com
