While the lead group held serve in the tough winds, the group just ahead of it struggled to keep up.
Japan’s Ai Miyazato, the 2012 Lotte Championship winner and former No. 1 in the world, drew a large crowd of spectators and the faithful stayed with her all the way through. They kept chants of ‘Ganbatte, Ai-Chan!’, and ‘Nice shot!’ rolling through Ko Olina’s gentle hills even though the results were far from pleasant.
Miyazato shot a 78 to fall from sixth to 18th, and one of her other playing partners, Jenny Shin of South Korea, shot a 76 to fall three spots. South Korean Chella Choi carried the load for the group, shooting a 72 for a top-five finish — her best since a fourth-place finish in Australia at the end of February.
In all, the group of chasers shot 10 over par to the lead group’s plus-2. Each of the women who started the day in the top three stayed there.
"It was hard out there, the hardest wind in the last four days," Miyazato said. "So I stayed patient, and it’s not like you can make 10 birdies in these conditions, so I didn’t really care about (her lack of birdies)."
The group took its first hit on the second hole, when Miyazato hit her drive into a tree fronting a pond and her second shot off a spectator just over the green, then watched as her chip failed to make it all the way to the putting surface. She two-putted from there for double.
She dropped two more shots with a double bogey on the seventh when she missed a pair of putts by a matter of inches. She went through the first three rounds of the tournament without a double bogey, but already had two in the final round.
She added another bogey on No. 9 to finish the front with a 41 and find herself more than 10 shots off the lead.
Miyazato finally gave her large gallery something to cheer about on the 514-yard par-5 13th when her approach checked up and rolled to the upper level 8 feet from the hole. She watched Shin’s putt come up short and Choi just miss her effort before calmly pouring in her putt to a raucous clapping from the crowd.
Miyazato birdied that hole in three of the four days of the tournament, the only hole she tamed more than twice.
She gave the shot right back on 14 when she found a bunker and couldn’t convert, and she parred her way home until bogeying No. 18 on her 31st putt.
Miyazato held court with a large contingent of Japanese media after signing her scorecard while her partners signed autographs and corrected fans who called them by the other’s name — both of them wore pink shirts.
After the former champ was finished in front of the cameras, she faced a line around the scorer’s tent of well-wishers waiting for a word and a signature. When asked if she could delay it for one more interview, Miyazato asked ‘Why me?’ because of her subpar round.
With more than $7 million in career earnings, the Okinawa-born Miyazato is Japan’s leading LPGA career money winner, and it will not be close for years. Mika Miyazato, who rose from 14th to seventh with a 71 in Saturday’s final round of the Lotte, still trails the legend by $4.5 million.
The top money earner in a season gets around $2.5 million.
Ai Miyazato missed the cut at Ko Olina last year, so this year’s top-20 finish —- her second of the season after the JTBC Founders Cup — can be considered a positive.
"I love this tournament, especially this place," Miyazato said. "It’s a beautiful place and a lot of people come to watch us play. It’s a great atmosphere and I love it."
