Nuria Iturrioz (-5) continues to soar across the golf courses. Freshly landed after her victory in Houston and with barely any time to breathe, she began her competition this Thursday at the VP Bank Swiss Ladies Open.
She did it in style, riding the wave by delivering a five-under-par card to place herself at the top of the leaderboard from the first day of the tournament. This is Nuria Iturrioz in her essence. When she gets going, she is a very difficult player to stop, and this Thursday she proved it again with a round of 66 strokes. The player from Son Servera is two shots behind the Englishwoman Esme Hamilton (-7), who with seven birdies and no mistakes has placed herself at the top in what is only her eleventh tournament on the circuit.
Nuria’s task was not easy. Between Golfcrest Country Club (Houston), where she competed on Sunday, and the Swiss course of Migros Golfpark Holzhausern, there are 8,580 kilometres. All the media attention on Sunday, travel, accumulated tension, returning to training and competing. All of this in just four days. No one would have been surprised by a high round from the Mallorcan.
However, Nuria thrives on competing after a win. When she’s on a roll, she likes to stay on the course. In fact, in 2019 she achieved back-to-back victories in consecutive weeks when she won in Morocco and Dubai. It’s no surprise to see her high up. There’s a lot of tournament left, but if she wins the cup, she would surpass Azahara Muñoz and secure six victories, becoming the second Spanish player with the most titles in LET history, only behind Carlota Ciganda. Very impressive numbers for the Balearic player. Six birdies and just one mistake spiced up her round.
Harang Lee (-3) also started on a high note. The Spanish player is ranked 140th in the Order of Merit and needs a great result to fight for a full circuit card.
With a round of 67 strokes, the Catalan matched her best start of the year and entered the top ten right from the start. Harang hasn’t strung together four consecutive rounds under par all year, and it seems that if she wants to turn her ranking situation around, now is the time to do it. Great start.
Among the other members of the Armada, the start of Marta Sanz at even par and Clara Moyano at one over par, just on the cut line, stand out. The rest of the Spanish players will need to climb positions this Friday if they want to make the cut in Switzerland: Marta Martín (+2), María Hernández and Luna Sobrón (+4), and finally, a Blanca Fernández (+6) who will need to fly very low in the second round.
