Chandler, Arizona – Lilia Vu doesn’t feel the best in the entire range. She made up for this with a score of 64 under 64 on Friday, leading twice in a group of Ford Championships including Nelly Korda and Jeeno Thitikul.
Korda and Thitikul, one and two players in the Women’s World Rankings, were classified in the morning and held a show at the Tornado Golf Club.
Thitikul has a birdie – Eagle-Birdie, six holes. Her opening nine shots were 29, Korda at 31. Thitikul ended at the 64-year-old and Korda’s 65-year-old.
“It’s like a great rhythm. We keep the rhythm very well,” Corda said. “When everyone plays well, you feed each other.”
The Ford Championship is the first domestic LPGA event since Asian Swing (Korda skipped the race for the second consecutive year), and the field is as strong as this aspect of the major, with each of the top ten in the world coming from the top ten in the world, with 19 out of 20 points.
VU, a double champion of 2023, struggled with his back injury last year, stressed over range and said her caddie had settled her down. He told her to choose a goal, which was as simple as VU seemed.
She entered the weekend with a 130-low 130, without bogey.
“Just focus on the shots in front of me, from point A to point B,” VU said. “That really helped me. Somehow happened to play well. It felt like everything was in the right slot.”
Charley Hull led the way as 63 after the first day, and he worked hard to walk because the breeze blew in the comfortable weather in Arizona. She even balanced in six holes – meaning that the ground was lost on the day – and assembled 69 holes. But she made only one birdie in 5-5 and joined Korda, Thitikul and Nanna Koertz Madsen to be below 132.
“I played some really good chips there and even saved some good chips. Looking forward to the weekend now,” Hull said.
The cut speed is 140 and 40, and it scores well in a course that still has a solid stretch green that can make it difficult for you to understand the birds easily. Thitikul and Vu rely on a large number of medium birdie putts.
When the Olympic gold medalist won the birdie Birdie-eagle-Birdie, Lydia Ko scored five goals into the weekend’s lead over a shot from the cutting line.
“As long as the course is so firm, I kind of scratched my head on the 11th thought, ‘Why do I feel like I have a bad ball?’ I don’t, but just because of the firmness of the green, it’s hard to really get to the pins at times.
“I just have to keep my head over and hit the ball at once,” she said. “I think that’s what led to the good results today.”
Brooke Henderson opened with 65 and scored two shots in the lead, hitting 75 and cutting that number.
