Japan's Saso wins Girls's Open for 2nd time

LANCASTER, Pa. — Yuka Saso turned a U.S. Girls’s Open champion for the second time Sunday and took her place in historical past with a uncommon footnote — the primary Filipina to win the Girls’s Open in 2021, and now the primary from Japan to win ladies’s golf’ greatest occasion.

Regardless of the flag, the 22-year-old Saso delivered a masterful efficiency at Lancaster Nation Membership with a 2-under 68. She ran off 4 birdies in a five-hole stretch on the again 9 amid a sequence of collapses and gained with out a lot drama.

Saso acquired up-and-down for par from in need of the 18th inexperienced to complete at 4-under 276, profitable by three pictures over Hinako Shibuno, who in 2019 turned the primary Japanese participant to seize the Girls’s British Open.

At 22 years, 347 days, Saso turned the youngest two-time champion in U.S. Girls’s Open historical past.

Saso and Shibuno have been the one two gamers underneath par, the fewest for the Girls’s Open in 10 years. Saso’s solely different LPGA Tour victory was the Girls’s Open at Olympic Membership in 2021. She additionally has two titles on the Japan LPGA.

Andrea Lee, a part of a three-way tie for the lead at the beginning of this wild day, was the final participant who had an opportunity to catch Saso. However the Stanford alum, a former No. 1 novice, badly missed her tee shot on the simple sixteenth and needed to accept par, then took bogey on the seventeenth. Lee took one final bogey on the 18th for a 75 to tie for third with Ally Ewing (66).

Saso has mentioned she needs she may play for 2 flags — her mom is from the Philippines, her father from Japan. She determined to change citizenship earlier than turning 21, and Saso wound up main a powerful exhibiting by Japan — 5 gamers have been among the many high 10.

Saso gained $2.4 million from the $12 million purse, the biggest in ladies’s golf and in ladies’s sports activities at a standalone venue.

The victory additionally put Saso in place to return to the Olympics — she performed for the Philippines in 2021 within the Tokyo Video games.

As a lot as Saso shined, Sunday was full of meltdowns. The ultimate two teams mixed to go 22-over par, none extra surprising than Minjee Lee.

The 2-time main champion who captured the Girls’s Open at Pine Needles two years in the past led by three pictures on the entrance 9. She nonetheless had management till placing her tee shot into the water on the par-3 twelfth and took double bogey to fall right into a tie with Saso.

She hit into waist-high grass two holes later for one more double bogey and closed with a 78.

Wichanee Meechai of Thailand, the outsider among the many leaders with no LPGA wins and a No. 158 world rating, fell out early and took a triple bogey on the par-3 sixth. She shot 77.

Saso wasn’t immune from errors. She had a four-putt double bogey on the par-3 sixth that left her 4 pictures behind Minjee Lee. That was the final of the errors that mattered.

Her huge run started with a 10-foot birdie putt on the twelfth, adopted by a wedge to three ft on the par-5 thirteenth gap. She hit her method to six ft on the fifteenth gap after which delivered the winner, a 3-wood to twenty ft on the reachable par-4 sixteenth for a two-putt birdie.

She three-putted the par-3 seventeenth, however she had room for error. Saso was within the scoring room when it turned official, and each participant got here via to share a hug.

Saso is the second lady to win a significant underneath two flags. Sally Little gained the 1980 LPGA Championship for South Africa, after which gained the du Maurier Basic in 1988 as an American citizen.

Saso is the third participant representing Japan to win a significant, becoming a member of Shibuno on the 2019 British and Chako Higuchi on the 1977 LPGA Championship.

Info from The Related Press was used on this report.