Linblad soars up leaderboard, shares lead with Buhai in LA
By Amy Rogers
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - For the second day at El Caballero Country Club, it was a round of 63 that led the way at the JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro.
Friday, LPGA Rookie and former LSU standout Ingrid Lindblad carded the low round of the day with a nine-under par round of 63 to soar more than 20 spots up the leaderboard and into to a tie at the top with first round co-leader Ashleigh Buhai, who faced the difficult challenge of trying to follow up her own opening round of 63 with another low score. Friday, Buhai managed a round of 68 to maintain her position atop the leaderboard and shares the 36-hole lead with Lindblad at 13-under par.
“I felt it was pretty similar,” Buhai said about how she played on Friday compared to Thursday. “I missed a few more greens, but felt like I executed the shots. I made maybe two bad swings to be honest. Managed to really keep myself in it by hitting good bunker shots, a few I was short sided because of these slopes but you could get creative and play it away and give yourself a six-footer and hole the putts, and again my putting was really solid today.”
Buhai says her game thrives when she’s able to be creative and that there’s plenty of shotmaking opportunities for her at El Caballero. Buhai has worked with her longtime swing coach, Doug Wood, on developing a variety of different shots that she’s able to rely on and she’s confident that she has the capability of hitting any type of shot that the course might demand from her over the next 36-holes.
“This course brings it out especially off the tee for me, being a fader of the golf ball,” Buhai said about shaping shots around El Caballero. “This course suits a draw off the tee a little bit more, so I’m hitting mid-flat drivers, soft drivers, and hit some 3-woods where other people are able to hit driver around the corner. I just hit it to the places where I feel comfortable and keep it in play.”
Friday, Lindberg took a page out of her college playbook and kept to the strategies that lifted her to 15 victories during her time at LSU. Lindberg said she texted her former coach, Garrett Runion, about how to handle the second round after she opened with a 68 on Thursday. Runion told her not to change anything and to stick to her game plan.
“I thought I read the greens really well,” Lindberg said about her 27 putts on Friday. “It wasn't just like tap-ins for par. It was 10-footers, 17 footers. I had good speed on the greens.”
Friday, the LPGA rookie rolled in four consecutive birdies on holes Nos. 3-6 and then went on another run of birdies on hole Nos. 11-14. Lindberg didn’t miss a single green in the second round and leaned on her putter to card a round of 63, a career best for the LPGA rookie who matched the low round of the week so far.
“I'm good enough to be out here and just I don't need to do anything different,” Lindberg said about how she’ll lean on her amateur success this weekend. “Just go out and play my own game every day, because after today, [I’m] definitely good enough.”
During the morning wave on Friday, Minjee Lee rode a hot putter up the leaderboard to sit solo second at 12-under par.
The 10-time winner on the LPGA Tour says the greens at El Caballero, which are the largest putting complexes the Tour has played so far this season, were a bit softer on Friday than they were on Thursday. Lee, who switched to a long putter at the start of the year, was saved throughout the round by her new club as she says she was able to roll in several putts from long range to record a bogey-free round of 65.
Lee says her strong start through 36-holes wasn’t something she saw coming but rather a culmination of the incremental improvement she’s seen week-to-week to begin the season as she’s focused on improving her driving accuracy and getting more comfortable with her new putter.
“I'm always constantly working on my same patterns to get a little bit better every day,” said the two-time major champion. “I might not be at 100 percent, but if I can get it to 85 to 90 I'm pretty much good on the course.”
First-round co-leader Yan Liu followed her opening round of 63 with a two-under par round of 70 on Friday. Liu said despite a solid warm-up with her driver on the range she struggled with hitting a fade once she stepped on the golf course. Liu is positioned at 11-under par through 36-holes along with Lauren Coughlin and Miyu Yamashita.
Friday, Nelly Korda dropped three shots at the fourth and fifth holes when she went double-bogey, bogey at the back-to-back par fours. But the world No. 1 managed to rebound with six birdies to keep pace with the leader and card a round of 68 to sit at nine-under par, four-strokes back thru 36-holes.
The cut line fell at four-under par, which will send home several notables including major champions Brooke Henderson (-3), Lexi Thompson (-2), Lilia Vu (Even), and Jennifer Kupcho (+6).
