There will be no Spanish women in the title eliminators at the T Mobile Match Play, a tournament of the LPGA Tour taking place at the Shadow Creek course, in Las Vegas. If on Thursday it was Azahara Muñoz who fell out of the fight by missing the first cut of the tournament, today it was Carlota Ciganda‘s turn.
An unprecedented debacle of the Navarrese golfer has not even allowed her to dream of getting among the top eight of the tournament, those who from this Saturday, already in match play format, are going to fight for the trophy.
Carlota signed this Friday the worst card of her professional career. She made 85 strokes, two more than her worst record so far, set at the British Open in 2015 at Turnberry. It was an unstoppable bleeding. The Ulzama player was not able to turn the day around at any time. It was night and day. If yesterday she handed in the best card of the day with 67 strokes, today she made the second worst, eighteen strokes difference between one day and the next. Brutal.
Carlota started the second round with four consecutive pars, orderly, but from hole 5 it was a torment. She made a triple bogey, three double bogeys and four bogeys, without birdies. A Chinese torture. She said on Thursday that she was going to look for birdies on the par 5s, which had resisted her. Well, her partial in these holes has been +2. Terrifying. The numbers explain everything: she has only taken five streets and seven greens. A martyrdom.
Obviously, Carlota has been far from the eighth place. It was a hard blow. The eight players who will fight for the title are Leona Maguire (-6), who finished the stroke play phase first with a three-stroke lead, Minami Katsu, Angel Yin, Nelly Korda, Rose Zhang, Sei Young Kim, Narin An and Moriya Jutanugarn, who won on the third playoff hole against three other players (Hae Ran Ryu, Brooke Henderson and Yuka Saso) after all finishing tied at +2.
Obviously, with only eight players entering the battle for the title, many pedigree golfers have been left out such as Lydia Ko, Ally Ewing, Jennifer Kupcho, Minjee Lee, Linn Grant, Allisen Corpuz, Maja Stark, Celine Boutier or Danielle Kang.
This Saturday the quarterfinals and semifinals will be played and on Sunday the grand final will take place to determine the champion.
