Park, Lang, Miyazato & Ewart Shadoff Share Rd.1 Lead At Kia Classic
Change is a good thing.
At least that was the case for Inbee Park, Brittany Lang, Ai Miyazato
and Jodi Ewart Shadoff who all credited changes they’ve made to their
game to their success on day one of the Kia Classic. The group opened
with 5-under par, 67’s to lead by one on Thursday.
Inbee Park has struggled in her start to 2016 but showed signs of
returning to form on Thursday in Carlsbad, carding a bogey-free 5-under
par, 67 to move into a share of the lead. For Park, getting her putter
going is something she hasn't been able to do in recent weeks and when
the world No.2 is rolling the ball well, she's nearly unstoppable. Park
made it around in 27 putts on day one.
“Yeah I mean everything went really well out there today, especially I
dropped some good putts today so that’s why I was able to shoot a good
round. It’s always good to have a good round like this going into a
major,” Park told the media. “The greens are actually in much better
shape than in previous years. I was quite comfortable on the greens
today and obviously getting some confidence on the greens was huge, so.”
Building on the momentum of her last two starts, Lang opened with an
eagle at the par 4, 1st hole, where she holed her approach from the
fairway to get off to a quick start and says the change she’s made to
her alignment is beginning to pay off.
“Yeah, since it worked last week, I've just been working on alignment
with putting and swing and just really getting behind the ball and
getting a nice picture and trying to commit, commit 100 percent to my
shots,” Lang told the media. “I didn't do as good of a job today, which
is really cool to shoot 5-under and know that you can still really work
on that.”
Lang opened with a 63 at last week’s JTBC Founders Cup and was in the
hunt throughout much of the week, finishing T-4 after a final round
4-under 68 wasn’t enough to keep pace with winner Sei Young Kim’s 62.
She’s had mixed success in Carlsbad, three times having missed playing
the weekend with her best finish coming in a T-20 in 2012
Lang shares the first round lead with former world No.1 Miyazato, who
has struggled in recent years including a missed cut last week in
Phoenix, but is happy with the changes she made this week with her
putter, which resulted in her low round of 2016 on Thursday.
“My loft wasn't enough last week. It was only like two degrees or
something. So I switched to the four-degree, and my ball running is so
much better than last week's. Probably that helped,” Miyazato said. “I'm
still in the process I think. It's just the first round I played, and
especially these greens, Poa annua is a little bit tricky. But like I
said, I feel my ball rolling, if I keep it in the right position, it's
going to go in. I want to keep that the next three days, too.”
Ewart Shadoff is coming off a series of changes of her own, having
overhauled her swing with David Leadbetter and Dr. Bob Winters who is
working with her on the mental aspects of the game as well as her short
game. Through it all she battled a back injury, missing 11 cuts in 2015,
her best finish coming in a T-23 in her penultimate event of the season
at the Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic.
“Yeah, just over the past year and a half or so, making a lot of
swing changes and improvements, and last year wasn't my greatest year
but we were going through a lot of swing changes,” Ewart Shadoff told
the media. “Finally they were starting to make a good impact. I'm
gaining a lot of confidence working with my sports psychologist, Dr. Bob
Winters, and everything is just really starting to gel together now and
every part of my game has improved a lot over the past six months or
so.”
World No.1 Lydia Ko, Jane Park and Mi Jung Hur are T-5 at 4-under
par. Michelle Wie carded her best round since the Coates Golf
Championship, posting a 2-under par, 70 to sit T-14 after day one.
Defending champion Cristie Kerr finished with a 1-over par, 73 to finish
T-56 for the day.
Alison Lee withdrew from the Kia Classic before completing her
opening round and did not give a reason. Lee missed the cut at last
week’s JTBC Founders Cup at 8-over par, her first missed cut since the
2015 RICOH Women’s British Open.
EmoticonEmoticon