BETHESDA, Md. — After one different glowing start, In Gee Chun lastly hit a wayward tee shot – into the thick powerful on the eighth hole at Congressional Nation Membership.
It was the closest she’s come to a shaky stretch by the first two days of the Ladies’s PGA Championship.
Chun recovered from a pair bogeys on the doorway 9 and shot a 3-under 69 on Friday to increase her end in six strokes on the occasion’s halfway degree. Chun led by 5 after the first spherical, equaling the biggest 18-hole profit throughout the historic previous of women’s important championships.
Bogeys at Nos. 7 and eight throughout the second spherical prevented her from pulling even further ahead, nevertheless she was nonetheless spectacular in following up Thursday’s stellar effectivity.
“I really don’t want to think about yesterday. It was almost a super sport I had,” said Chun, who’s 11 beneath par by two rounds. “If I can think about yesterday, then I actually really feel like I couldn’t make good consider my sport within the current day.”
Lydia Ko (67) and Jennifer Kupcho (68) had been second. Kupcho took the first important of the season in early April on the Chevron Championship and gained a playoff Sunday in Michigan for her second LPGA Tour title.
Kupcho sounds cosy having to chase down Chun.
“I really feel being behind and trying to catch up is greatest,” she said. “I suggest, I had the lead at Chevron by a lot of strokes, so I perceive the way it feels to be in her place. Being behind is a minimum of my hottest method.”
Caroline Inglis (68) was one different stroke once more at 4 beneath, along with Brooke Henderson (69), Hannah Inexperienced (69), Sei Youthful Kim (69) and Jennifer Chang (70).
After moist conditions for the first spherical launched the course’s dimension into focus, it was a clear, warmth day Friday, and Congressional was a bit additional forgiving. Ko’s spectacular effectivity set the tone early on. Like Chun, Ko is trying for her third important title and first since 2016.
Chun began with three birdies throughout the first 5 holes. Then she missed the inexperienced on the par-3 seventh and took a bogey. On No. 8, a 245-yard par 4, her tee shot went into the powerful on the sting of a greenside bunker – the first fairway she’d missed all occasion.
Chun punched out of it backwards, then didn’t stand up and down for par.
Nonetheless, these had been her solely two bogeys of the spherical, and she or he’s saved the sphere at arm’s dimension. She accomplished with a birdie on the 433-yard 18th, hitting a 7-iron at a pin positioned in the direction of the once more of the inexperienced, merely in entrance of the water.
She made the 10-foot putt for her fifth birdie of the day.
“I really want to make the tip with birdie, so I attempt to make really good focus. I did all of the issues on that putt,” she said. “That’s the reason I say I’m so happy I made it.”
Hye-Jin Choi and Pornanong Phatlum every shot 72 after first-round 69s. They now path by eight.
Lexi Thompson matched Ko with a 67, highlighted by an eagle when she holed out a wedge from 102 yards on the par-4 seventeenth.
“I took but yet one more membership additional to control the spin,” Thompson said. “I had spun once more a wonderful amount of pictures. So I tried to take but yet one more and chip it, and I ended up spinning it once more. It was nonetheless really going fast with the spin, nevertheless ended up getting in. I merely went off the gang on account of we won’t see one thing from down there.”
U.S. Ladies’s Open champ Minjee Lee (68) was with Thompson at 3 beneath. Defending Ladies’s PGA champ Nelly Korda (74) was at 1 over.
