Carolina López Chacarra (-3) has not only made the cut at the Blue Bay LPGA, a tournament on the LPGA Tour taking place in China, but she has also managed to stay in the upper part of the leaderboard after the second round. And she has done so on a day when things weren’t going her way, in difficult conditions, uncomfortable with her swing.
She hasn’t managed to get into rhythm at almost any point during the round, yet she has delivered a par card that keeps her among the best. Today she has shown the LPGA, where she is making her debut as a professional this week in a regular tournament, that she also has a plan B and can rely on it when necessary. The Madrid native is in 16th place, three shots off the top 10 and eight from the leading position held by the Korean Mi Hyang Lee (-11).
Carolina hasn’t been bad off the tee. She has gone long, as is usual for her, and has hit 11 out of 14 fairways, yet she has struggled with her irons. She has only hit seven greens, which means she has had to rely on her short game in all its forms to navigate tricky situations. She has made five birdies and five bogeys. It has been a master class in short game and the putter has also been supportive. She has saved the day on a bad day and now has the whole weekend ahead to attack. She really doesn’t have much to lose once she has made the cut at the Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Course in Hainan.
As we say, the first position is held by Mi Hyang Lee (-11), a 32-year-old Korean golfer with a lot of experience and fewer victories than one might expect given her consistency. She has two wins on the LPGA Tour, although the first was in 2014 and the second in 2017. It’s been a while. One shot behind Lee are the Chinese Yu Liu (-11) and Austin Kim (-9). The American is playing a different course this week. This is demonstrated by her average distance from the tee: 332 yards. Roughly 40 yards ahead of the second longest in the tournament. Impressive.
From here, there is a small gap in the leaderboard. A Lim Kim (-7), Ayaka Furue (-7), and Weiwei Zhang (-7) share fourth place, four shots off the lead. In any case, there are still 36 holes to go and anything can happen.
