Wie/Jutanugarn have best finishes of the season
Both Michelle Wie and Moriya Jutanugarn notched their best finishes of 2017. For Wie, she fired a 4-under-par 65 at Blythefield Country Club to finish in a tie for second, while Jutanugarn shot a 3-under-par 66 to get to 14-under and tie for fourth.
Wie said she felt good about her performance this week, despite the inconsistent weather during Sunday’s finale.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Wie. “It was tough out there. I mean the wind just started blowing and it was just interesting. Some spots are really wet, some spots are dry, but overall I felt like I played good this week and I'm happy about it.”
Jutanugarn notched her third-straight top-10 finish this week (after a tie for 6th at the LPGA Volvik Championship and a tie for 7th at the ShopRite LPGA Classic presented by ACER), and her fifth on the season. I've been playing solid. A lot of things I learned about this week and it was always fun to playing solid and have a chance to get close to a lead and be on the leaderboard,” she said. “It was great.”
Henderson does it for Dad
Brooke Henderson’s father, Dave, is not only her role model, but also her swing coach.
And Sunday, she won one for Dad.
With Dave and Darlene – Henderson’s mother – in the stands cheering her on, Henderson sunk a six-foot par putt on the 72nd hole for her fourth victory on the LPGA Tour.
It made for a Father’s Day the Henderson family won’t forget any time soon.
“This morning he said, ‘do it for me,’ so this is definitely for him,” said Henderson of the pre-round pep talk from her father. “He’s my coach, my best friend, and a great father.”
Henderson described Sunday as ‘the perfect day.’
“(My Dad) is with me all the time and he gave me a lot of lines early in the week that I didn't know, that I wouldn't normally take without him there. But he said, ‘If you want to win and you want to contend, you need to take these lines off the tee.’ I did that and I had an advantage over the rest of the field all four days,” she said. “So this win, I say it's for him but it really is for him because I probably wouldn't have done it without him.”
Thompson finishes second for the second-straight week
It was the second time in as many weeks where Lexi Thompson had a chance to win on the LPGA Tour coming down to the 72nd hole.
However, once again, it was just not to be.
Thompson needed to hole out from the fairway on the par-4 18th to tie Brooke Henderson’s score, but she ended up flying it about 30 feet right of the hole. She admitted afterwards that Sunday was just ‘very windy’ and the most windy of any other day this week.
“It was just swirling so it was tough to really concentrate on the shot that you wanted to hit and commit to it. Like the other three days, it was pretty easy to commit to it. Today was definitely a little more difficult. Didn't hit it as well as I wanted to, but that's okay, it's golf,” she explained.
Thompson, who has won eight times on the LPGA Tour, said she got off to a great start and was hitting her driver well all day long, which she said was a positive. She just didn’t get things rolling on the greens.
“It is what it is,” she said. “I’ll take second place and just move on to the next one.”
Sagstrom happy with her performance
By her own admission, Madeline Sagstrom has had a ‘rough’ year. But after Sunday’s result – she finished tied for fourth for her best finish of the year, and her second top 10 of the season – she’s taking a lot of positives with her moving forward.
“This year has been very much up-and-down. I finished last in my first tournament this year. It's been a journey, for sure, and I am slowly but surely climbing the ladder,” she said. “This is just proving to myself that I'm on the right track and that I'm doing good things and that I can be out here and play against the best players, for sure.”
Sagstrom made five birdies Sunday and just a lone bogey to move up seven spots on the leaderboard. She said her goal Sunday was to stay patient, because she said she starts ‘trying too hard’ when it gets windy.
“My whole goal today was just to stay patient and just hit the shots and not worrying about the outcome,” she said. “I was just playing to my targets and hopefully I made the right decisions, and I seemed to make a lot of good decisions today.”
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