Saso survives brutal start to US Women’s Open that left Korda at 80

LANCASTER, Pennsylvania. Former champion Yuka Saso leaned on her putter to survive a brutally difficult start at the US Women’s Open on Thursday, an opening round that featured Nelly Korda making a 10 on her third hole and just four players barely beating the pair.

Saso made three big par shots to start the back nine at Lancaster Country Club, rolled in two mid-length birdie putts at the end of his round and finished three-putting from the collar of the 18th green for bogey and a 2-under 68.

It seemed even lower considering all the carnage around it. The top 10 players in the women’s world rankings had an average score of 75.5 – including Korda’s 80 – and only two-time major champion Minjee Lee was not above par.

“It’s a US Open. It’s a specialization. It’s the biggest major championship and I think it’s one of the hardest weeks we’ll play,” Saso said. “I don’t tell myself to be confident or anything.”

Saso, who capitalized on Lexi Thompson’s 2021 collapse to win the Olympic Club Women’s Open, led by a stroke over Andrea Lee, Wichanee Meechai of Thailand and recently crowned NCAA champion Adela Cernousek of France.

Cernousek, a junior at Texas A&M, had company among amateurs. Three of them were in the par 70 group — U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Megan Schofill, Catherine Park and 15-year-old Asterisk Talley, who is coming off her first USGA title at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship.

Lee, who won her second Women’s Open major at Pine Needles two years ago, holed out from 15 feet near the green at the par-3 17th to get back to par.

“Just go back and try to beat the course again,” she said.

The rest of the LPGA Tour’s biggest stars took a beating, none as bad or as shocking as Korda. The No. 1 player in women’s golf, Korda arrived in Lancaster after winning six of her last seven tournaments. Three holes into her opening round, she was sent reeling.

Korda hit from a back bunker into a creek on the par-3 12th hole and then pitched into the creek on the other side twice on her way to a 10. She added four bogeys over the next 15 holes and signed an 80, matching his highest round as a pro.

“There’s not a lot of wishful thinking, honestly,” Korda said. “I just didn’t play well today. I didn’t hit it well. I found myself in a lot of trouble. Making a 10 on a par 3 definitely won’t do any good at the U.S. Open.

“Yes,” she concluded, “just a bad day at the office.”

It was a bad day for many others. Rose Zhang, who ended Korda’s five-game winning streak three weeks ago in New Jersey, looked shell-shocked as she walked off the 18th green with yet another three-shot bogey and a 79.

Lydia Ko and Brooke Henderson each scored 80. The average score on the field was 75.2.

The wind was blowing at some of the highest points on the course and the greens were firm and bouncy, just the way the USGA likes them. The field of 156 players produced just over 900 scores of bogey or worse – in Korda’s case, a sevenfold bogey.

Thompson, likely playing her final U.S. Women’s Open after announcing she will no longer play a full schedule after this year, began her back nine by going from bunker to bunker to bunker to thick and rough and taking triple bogey. She shot 78.

Saso hit 5.7 shots from the field with her bat and that took her into the lead.

“I made really good shots. I think I was more lucky than playing well,” Saso said.

She has a chance at a quirky victory this week if she wins and becomes the only Women’s Open champion to play under two banners.

Saso won as a Filipina at the Olympic Club and the following year – before turning 21 – declared her Japanese citizenship (her father is Japanese). A big week could also put her in position to return to the Olympics under a different banner.

That seems so far away, especially after such a hard day of work.

“There’s still a lot of golf left,” Saso said. “The golf course is very difficult and the conditions are very difficult, especially with the wind swirling and blowing at 15 mph with firm greens and fast greens.”

This didn’t seem to hurt the amateur, especially Cernousek. She made just two shots, one of them a three-footer from 40 feet on the 14th hole, and held her nerve to break par. She was surprised to see her name on all the scoreboards.

“I was like, ‘Wow!’ I was following all the course leaderboards,” she said.

Talley is one of two 15-year-olds on the field at Lancaster and played well above her age, making smart decisions when she got out of position. Her only gaffe occurred on the par-5 seventh hole, when she just advanced her second shot about 50 yards from the thick rough, set up and placed it in the water facing the green. She made triple bogey.

But Talley — his mother says Asterisk means “little star” in Greek — followed through with a nine-hole streak of three birdies and six pars, not missing another putt until the 17th,

“I feel like I could have done a lot better today, but I’m not mad at all about my round,” Talley said. “I was listening to everyone, even par, it’s a good round today. I wish I had been a below average couple.

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