A year after producing one of the great fightbacks in golf history to land her maiden major with an incredible eagle-birdie-eagle finish, Kim was going nicely at 2-under when she served up a triple-bogey seven at the par-four 12th and then coughed up a couple more sixes on the long 15th and 18th holes. \u00a0<\/p>\n
She finished up at 2-over 73 to be joint 87th at the close of day one in \u00c9vian-les-Bains.<\/p>\n
Fellow Australian and 2021 winner Minjee Lee suffered a worse day, opening with a 6-over par 77 that may have already scuppered the three-time major champ’s chances.<\/p>\n
On a day when Japan’s Akie Iwai roared into a two-shot lead with an 8-under 63, the distant Australian challenge was led by Cassie Porter, who still found herself six shots off the lead in joint-20th place after a 2-under 69.<\/p>\n
She was a shot clear of Hannah Green, the former Women’s PGA champ, and Karis Davidson, who both fired 70s and were tied for 35th place.<\/p>\n
Iwai, though, made birdies at three of the last four holes, including the par-five 18th, to lead by two from Perrine Delacour, whose 6-under 65 included an eagle at the par-five 15th and a pair of bogeys toward the end of her round.<\/p>\n
“I was able to have a good focus on my golf and stay committed. \u200cI prepared a lot around the green with chipping and putting. I was driving well, but honestly everything was good,” \u00a0Iwai said.<\/p>\n
“I like driver, so if \u200cI’m good and consistent with my driver it helps. I made the good score. I like this course, it’s similar to a course in Japan.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A group of five players with 5-under 66s included the winner of the Women’s PGA Championship two weeks ago, Haeran Ryu, and world number five Charley Hull, who started the week as a guest in the Royal Box at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
But like Lee, world number one Nelly Korda, who won the season’s first two majors, had a bad day, finding herself 11 shots back with a 3-over 74, including a double-bogey six at her first hole, the 10th.<\/p>\n
AAP\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian golfing champions Grace Kim and Minjee Lee have both had sluggish starts at the Evian Championship in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10342,6133,14109,44,2761,5638,8120,10094],"class_list":["post-34178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cassie-porter","tag-chevron-championship","tag-evian-championship","tag-golf","tag-grace-kim","tag-minjee-lee","tag-the-us-open","tag-womens-pga-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}