FINAL-ROUND TEE TIMES AND BROADCAST
Players will play in threesomes and go off split tees in the final round with the first groups going off at 9:22am ET and the final group going off at 11:45am ET. Stacy Lewis, Anna Nordqvist and Charley Hull will be in final group. Golf
Channel’s live broadcast will start early at 2:30pm ET.
HISTORIC ALBATROSS FOR JANG
Ha Na Jang is known on Tour for her bubbly personality, constant smile and passionate fist pumps and on Saturday she made herself known for one more thing. Jang wrote her name into the LPGA record books after she recorded the first albatross on a par 4 in LPGA Tour history. And produced a memorable highlight reel of emotional reaction to go with it.
The 23-year old from South Korea used one stroke of her 3-wood on the par 4 8th hole, which was listed at 232 yards but playing at 218 yards into the wind.
Jang said she didn’t get to see the ball roll into the hole, but both her dad and coach, Kevin Kim, were greenside and gave the cheering reaction to let the group on the tee box know it was better than it seemed.
“Looks like just tap in eagle, but I don’t see ball finish but I see my dad,” said Jang. “He say ‘oh, you inside the hole.’”
Jang’s coach said ‘it was perfect speed and looked like somebody literally rolled it to the hole.’
Jang had one albatross in competition while competing on the KLPGA in 2012. She had two career holes-in-one on the KLPGA and said she had four in practice rounds and pro-ams last year on the LPGA during her rookie season.
Jang said she doesn’t want to be greedy but said she’s disappointed she didn’t win a car. Someone notified her tournament organizers don’t put car prizes on par 4’s. She looked up the hill outside the scoring tent at the Ocean Club and eyed up the Mercedes Benz SVU in a sponsor display onsite.
“A new car, please, a car, please,” said Jang. “I wanted a car, I need a car.”
She walked up to the hole and stopped a few feet short and got down to her knees in a bowing stance and appeared to kiss the ground. Jang joked that the ace was a better option than her recent play with her flatstick.
“Better than my putter.”
NO WIND? LET’S MOVE!
With some less windy conditions at the Ocean Club on Saturday, players wanted to take advantage of the scoreable conditions in the third round on moving day. Three players shot rounds of 66 for the low round of the day including Ilhee Lee (from T20 to T6), Hee Young Park (from T30 to T8) and Candie Kung (from T69 to T19).
Stacy Lewis also made a move up the leaderboards after posting 6-under 67 and moved from T10 into a tie for third and sits just one shot off the lead. She woke up with one thought in her head.
“I’ve got to shoot a number,” said Lewis. “And early, I think that was just kind of trying to force things early. I hit some good putts that didn’t go in and just trying to force things. Made a good putt on 7 and that just kind to seemed to get me relaxed a bit and I hit the ball great again. The golf swing’s been there all week and it’s just been how many putts I’ve made.”
ADDING ON THE YARDS
Hee Young Park’s fellow competitors may be slightly blindsided when they tee it up with her in 2016 because Park is now booming drives 15 yards further than she did in 2015. Park said she spent the offseason working to get stronger and she showed the difference in power in her game Saturday with a third-round 8-under-par 65, tying the tournament record, to climb back into contention heading into the final round.
“Off-season, lots of workouts, even fun workout stuff, kickboxing, like aerobics,” she said.
It’s shown so far this week. After averaging 249.6 yards per drive a year ago, good for 67th on Tour, Park is bombing it this week with an average drive of 269.7 yards per drive this week.
“I try to make my swing stronger, which I got more distance about everything, even include driver, like 10, 15 yard farther now, yeah,” Park said. “Then I switched my new irons, which is liked upgraded model. Same Mizuno irons but it goes far every yardage like a couple more yards, so it’s just good, easy to play.”
QUOTABLE
“It’s just old news. There’s so many of them, it’s just one after the other...There’s definitely, there’s an advantage I think to being older, to being there before and having some experience. But it’s old news by this point. If they haven’t won or done something by the time they’re 18 years old, everybody’s going to be compared to Lydia now at that age and nobody’s ever going to get close to what she did. That expectation at 18, they expect to win.” -Stacy Lewis on the expectation for young players to win right away on Tour
“So I was sitting down in the restaurant and it was my cheat meal day and I had like calamari and I had a salad as well so it wasn’t like the best of cheap meals. And I sat down and finished it and put my napkin on the table and I smelt burning. I was like, oh, good thing we didn’t have the pizza because it smells a bit burny. I looked down and there’s this hole like growing bigger and bigger and bigger... I’m like sheez. So I patted it out and so thankfully when they took it away, I like put it in the bowl so they didn’t notice.” -Charley Hull on setting her napkin on fire at dinner on Friday night
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