England’s Mimi Rhodes has dropped five shots off leaders Hannah Green and Minjee Lee after the third round at the HSBC Women’s World Championship.
Rhodes followed up Thursday’s bogey-less 68 with a three-under 69 on Friday, leaving her in a four-way tie for fifth at the halfway stage at Sentosa Golf Club’s Tanjong course, but the 24-year-old dropped down to tied-12th after three bogey’s and a double-bogey in a round of 73.
Rhodes, who racked up three victories on the Ladies European Tour to secure LET Rookie of the Year honours and then capped off her season by earning her LPGA Tour card through Q-Series for 2026, fell away from Australians Hannah Green and Minjee Lee at the top of the leaderboard.
Green, the 2019 Women’s PGA Championship winner who won the Singapore tournament in 2024, shot a four-under 68 and three-time major winner Lee 69 to post three-round totals of 11-under 205.
American Angel Yin (68) and Haeran Ryu (70) of South Korea are tied for third.
With the final group on the eighth hole, six players were tied for the lead at nine under.
Yin took the lead for first time with a birdie from off the green on the 10th, displacing her fellow American Auston Kim, who had led after the first two rounds.
Kim had back-to-back bogeys on the seventh and eighth to fall out of the lead, but it could have been worse. After seeing her ball plugged in a hazard off the green on the eighth hole and having to return to the fairway to hit her fifth shot, she sank a 20-foot putt for bogey to minimise the damage.
Kim finished with a 73 and is tied for sixth at eight under, three behind Green and Lee.
“Definitely, there are a lot of birdies to be made but it’s very easy to make bogey,” Green said. “So I think just limiting as many of those as possible.
“I’ve been hitting the ball into the greens, so if I can continue to do that, and even though I’m playing with Minjee, we are good friends, I don’t want to get too caught up in what her scores are.”
Yin said the margins were close in the third round.
“Good golf and good luck. Honestly there’s nothing much you can do to it,” Yin said. “There’s a lot of instances today where it was like one hole, I made this unbelievable up-and-down. That’s skill and luck to me. So get lucky and get good.”
Lee won her first major in 2021 at the Evian Championship, her second at the US Women’s Open in 2022 and her third at last year’s Women’s PGA Championship.
Top-ranked Jeeno Thitikul, who won last week’s tournament in her native Thailand, shot 70 that left her at three under.
She is tied with defending champion Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson, who each shot 71, all eight strokes behind the leading Australians.
The tournament is the second of three stops as part of the LPGA’s early‑season Asian swing, with the final event taking place next week on Hainan Island, China.
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