Australian rookie Grace Kim on Saturday won the LOTTE Championship at breezy Hoakalei Country Club for her first LPGA Tour title, beating Yu Liu and Yu Jin Sung with a birdie on the first hole of a playoff, while Taiwan’s Chien Pei-yun finished one stroke off the winner.
While Liu and Sung scrambled after hitting their second shots to the left of the green on the par-five 18th, the 22-year-old Kim went over the water to the right, then chipped to 8 feet to set up her birdie.
“I definitely wanted to have a good go at it, knowing that the green wasn’t the best, I guess, angle in from where we were,” Kim said. “I would have to admit that I wasn’t planning to go that aggressive. I did push it right. So just letting you guys know. Yeah, I guess, yeah, I got lucky.”
Photo: AFP
Liu made a par and Sung had a bogey, hitting her third over the green and past Kim’s second.
“I’m still speechless that it’s kind of done already and I got the job done,” Kim said.
Playing alongside Sung in the final threesome, Kim shot a four-under 68, rebounding from a bogey on the par-four 14th to birdie the last two holes. She got up and down from the front-left bunker on 18 in regulation, making a 7-footer.
Sung finished with a 69, getting up and down from the front right bunker on 18 with a 9-footer. The 22-year-old South Korean played on a sponsor exemption after winning the LOTTE Open last year on the Korean LPGA.
Liu began the round five strokes behind Sung in a tie for 15th, then shot a 64 — the best score in the two years at Hoakalei — to post at 12-under 276. The 27-year-old from China finished about an hour before the final group.
Linnea Strom, the Swede playing in the second-to-last group, missed a 10-foot birdie try on 18 to finish a stroke back with Chien. Strom shot a 69, with a double-bogey on the 14th.
The 32-year-old Chien, who shot six birdies with a bogey on the fourteenth, closed with an 11-under-par 67.
Fellow Taiwanese Hsu Wei-ling finished tied for 61st place, with a three-over 291, after shooting a two-over 74 in the final round.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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