Anyone's tournament heading into moving day
July 27, 2019 by Bennett Wineka in Coverage, Recap with 0 comments
Par is good at Idlewild, but avoiding the double-bogeys is even more so.
Only three players in the Open Women’s field managed bogey or better on every hole during round one of the Idlewild Open and all three are in currently fourth or better in the standings.
Catrina Allen, Elaine King, and Sarah Hokom kept the cleanest scorecards in Kentucky and will make up 75% of the lead card on Saturday. Allen is in the lead at 4-over par 71, shooting the hot round on the tougher 2019 layout. She’s tied for first in finding Circle 1 in regulation at 22%.
King is tied with Holly Finley in second at 5-over par 72 and has the highest bogey percentage of the leaders, but also is second in birdies. Finley either held or flirted with the lead at several points in the day and was under par until hole 15. She closed out her round with four consecutive holes over par, including carding a triple-bogey on the par 5 hole 16 with three OB strokes.
Hokom, Madison Walker, and Jessica Weese are all tied in fourth at 6-over par 73. Walker is leading the division in C2 in regulation at 38%, and Hokom was the only player to not miss a putt inside C1X.
Four off the lead in seventh place is Paige Pierce, who had a triple-bogey and quadruple-bogey on holes 7 and 16 respectively.
Takeaways
- Par rose from 66 in 2018 to 67 in 2019 with some changes made to the course, including but not limited to added OB and new basket positions.
- Even with the course changes, round one average scores dropped year-over-year from 82.26 to 79.22.
- In three years of the tournament, only one FPO player has ever been able to birdie hole 5, and that was the first round of 2017 when the division was still playing it as a par 4 from the longer tee pad. No one was able to even find C2 in regulation on Friday on the 426-foot par 3.
