Lotte’s 18th turned into watery grave for top golfers

A pond, a lake, the drink, a lagoon — call it whatever you want to call it.

The water in front of the 18th green at Ko Olina Golf Club made Saturday’s final round of the LPGA Lotte Championship a bloodbath for the hottest players on tour this season.

All eight golfers in the top 10 of the Race to the CME globe rankings — a season-long points competition on the LPGA Tour — still in the field shot over par trying to chase down leader Brooke Henderson, with the final hole causing havoc in the final pairings.

Balls splashed into the water from golfers in each of the last two groups, with world No. 10 Nelly Korda going in twice to shoot a quadruple-bogey eight to fall from second to eighth place.

Even golfers who took water out of play by pounding it over the green were not rewarded.

Former world No. 1 Ariya Jutanugarn, who spent much of the day under par and the closest to chasing down Henderson, stayed dry on her second shot but wound up with a double bogey after a gentle chip from behind a sand trap failed to reach the top of the green, where it could roll toward the hole.

A delicate downhill chip ran past the hole and a two-putt coming back dropped Jutanugarn into a tie for third place at 11 under.

“Really, really windy, more than the first three rounds, so it’s pretty rough,” Jutanugarn said.

Ranked No. 1 in the world for 21 consecutive weeks until February, Jutanugarn earned just her second top-10 finish of the season in seven events.

She held steady at 12 under and was even on her round when she took advantage of the back-to-back par-5s with consecutive birdies to get to 14 under.

She couldn’t put any more pressure on Henderson down the stretch, closing with a bogey and a double on her final four holes.

“You have to be more patient,” Jutanugarn said. “I feel like everything getting better. I wasn’t playing well the last few months because (I was) thinking about, like, the outcome too much, so right now it’s getting a lot better.”

Korda, second in the CME rankings, put her approach shot on 18 in the water and then watched painfully as her chip shot from the drop zone fell short of the green and rolled backward until coming to its wet demise.

She finished with a 77.

“It was a tough day, but I ended really poorly and I’m pretty disappointed in that,” Korda said. “It was an unfortunate final round, but there is nothing I can do about it anymore.”

World No. 4 Minjee Lee, who played alongside Henderson and Korda, had one of her four bogeys of the day on the 18th and finished with a 2-over 74.

“I had a couple of loose shots here and there and my putting got a little cold the last two days,” Lee said. “Probably the windiest out of all the days we played out there.”

The eight golfers in the CME top 10 combined to shoot 22 over par. World No. 1 Jin-Young Ko went an entire round without making birdie and shot 2-over 74.

Azahara Munoz, who has finished in the top six in four of seven events this year and was 10 under through two rounds, also failed to make a birdie and shot 75.