On a wet and soggy day in Williamsburg, Virginia, five players turned in 6-under, 65's to share the opening round lead at the Kingsmill Championship. Rain fluctuated between light and moderate for much of the day. Scoring conditions were ideal with soft conditions due to an inch and a half of overnight night and the additional rain on Thursday.

Jessica Korda, Annie Park and Azahara Munoz carded 65's in the morning wave while In Gee Chun and Jaye Marie Green matched them in the afternoon.

Nasa Hataoka, who made a hole-in-one on 17 late in the day, and Ariya Jutanugarn are one shot off the lead at 5-under.

A total of 29 players posted rounds of 3-under or better.

Korda’s extra work pays off

Jessica Korda admitted to her coach after the LPGA MEDIHEAL Championship – where she notched her third top-5 result of the season – that she had had trouble committing to shots and as a result, her distance off the tee suffered.

“My coach was like, ‘Well you have two weeks to figure it out,’” said Korda with a smile. “I was like, ‘gee thanks.’”

Whatever it was she worked on during her two weeks off, including last week’s LPGA Tour break week, it paid off in spades after the first round of the LPGA’s Kingsmill Championship presented by Geico, as Korda fired a bogey free 6-under-par 65 to sit tied for the lead with Azahara Munoz, Annie Park, In Gee Chun, and Jaye Marie Green.

Korda said she was trying to work on her transition during the last two weeks, admitting she was “just trying to hit into the fairway” in San Francisco, because she wasn’t feeling great over the ball.

“I felt good,” Korda said after her round. “I stuck to my process. I’m working on a couple of things before the U.S. Open so just stuck to that and it worked.”

With poor weather in the forecast Thursday and through the weekend in Virginia, Korda said she was happy to take advantage of calmer conditions and lighter rain in the morning of the first round.

She was aggressive in her approach, hitting 12/14 fairways and 16/18 greens.

“You knew if the wind wasn’t blowing and the greens were soft could be really aggressive. I just needed some birdies to drop, and that’s exactly what happened,” she said.

Korda got off to a fast start, birding three of her first five holes. She also birdied her final hole of the day in textbook fashion – hitting a long drive down the middle of the fairway followed by a sand wedge to just four feet.

Korda’s season has been an impressive one thus far not only because of her results on the course, but what she’s had to endure off the course prior to the year as well. She is still recovering from off-season jaw surgery that caused her headaches and occasional bouts of pain, but her first win of the year came in her first start of the season.

Korda sits 6th in the Race to the CME Globe after winning the Honda LPGA Thailand. If she manages to find the winner’s circle again this week, she’s projected to move to 1st in those standings.

Last year, there were eight repeat winners on the LPGA Tour (Shanshan Feng and IK Kim, who won three times, Brooke Henderson, Anna Nordqvist, Sung Hyun Park, Lexi Thompson, Cristie Kerr, and So Yeon Ryu) and if Korda was to win, she would be the first two-time winner on Tour so far this year.

Trailing the five-pack at the top, led by Korda, are two golfers at 5-under including Nasa Hataoka and past champion Ariya Jutanugarn (2016), who had her best opening-round of any tournament so far in 2018.

Annie

Annie Park makes a move

Annie Park has only played two LPGA Tour events so far this year, but after making it to the final group on Saturday at the LPGA MEDIHEAL Championship, she finally felt like she belonged.

Park graduated from the Epson Tour in 2015 and played a full LPGA Tour schedule in 2016 and 2017. This year she’s mixed in a few Epson Tour events with her LPGA Tour starts and has found some solid success – two top-5 finishes, in fact. She won three times in her final year on the Epson Tour (2015) but admitted Thursday golf still wasn’t easy.

She did, however, made it look that way in the first round of the Kingsmill Championship, firing a 6-under-par 65 to sit tied for the lead with four other golfers.

“I was hitting it well, putting it pretty well. I was struggling reading putts mid-round but I started to roll some putts in, so it was a good day,” said Park, who was named the 2015 Epson Player of the Year in 2015.

Park was bogey-free on Thursday, and her day included a stretch where she went birdie-eagle-birdie on No’s 14-16. He approach on the par-5 15th nestled up a mere foot from the hole for a tap-in eagle.

Her 65 was her lowest score so far in 2018, and her lowest round in relation to par since a 7-under-par 64 at The Evian Championship in September 2016.

She Monday Qualified for the MEDIHEAL Championship and got reshuffled into the LPGA’s pecking order for the next five events, where she’ll hope to stick it out again on the LPGA Tour.

Park said she leaned on some longtime experience playing the River Course at Kingsmill Resort while she was growing up. She said she first starting playing at Kingsmill resort as a 10-year-old, just a seven-hour drive from her hometown of Levittown, New York.

“It’s always been a great golf course,” said Park. “Great conditions, ever since I was in junior golf. It’s in my memories […] I personally enjoy playing this golf course.”

Jaye

Green off to a great start

Jaye Marie Green shot her best round on the LPGA Tour since September 2016 to tie for the lead after the first round of the Kingsmill Championship.

Green’s 6-under-par 65 tied her with five others at the top after the first round – the first time she’s held a piece of the lead after the opening round in her career.

“I think I only missed one green today, so I had a lot of opportunities for birdie and I made seven of them, so that's good,” she said. It feels good to be on top […] I mean, there is so much golf left, but I like my position.”

Her career-low round on the LPGA Tour is a 63 (the 2015 Cambia Portland Classic and 2014 Marathon LPGA Classic) and the last time she fired a 65 was the Manulife LPGA Classic in 2016.

She notched three top-10 finishes in her first year on the Epson Tour in 2013 before earning medalist honors at the 2014 LPGA Tour qualifying tournament after firing a record 29-under par.

But Green, who was a celebrated amateur, has yet to win as a professional (her best-ever LPGA Tour result is a T7) and she’s eager to get that monkey off her back.

She said that coming into this week she had been playing well, but the scores weren’t reflecting her good play. Today, she said, everything clicked.

“Coming into this week I felt like my game has been in a good spot,” she said. Just for the score to actually reflect how good I've been playing felt good. I've been really wanting to get my first win, so that (has been) my goal every week.”

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