Sarah Kemp bounces back from double bogey in first round of Lotte Championship

It’s said that on the first day you can’t win a tournament but you can certainly lose one.

Sarah Kemp has been around long enough to have heard that a few hundred times. But it didn’t enter her mind at all when she double- bogeyed her fourth hole of the first round at the Lotte Championship on Wednesday.

A player with less experience might have let that get into her head and adversely affect the round and maybe her chances of making the cut, much less contending.

Kemp, 36, said in her younger days that could have been her. But not now … even though she said she can still be “terrible at being patient.”

“Doubles are just a part of the game,” she said after bouncing back to shoot 68 Wednesday. “And I knew there were a lot of birdie opportunities coming up.”

Kemp took advantage of most of them, carding five on the seven holes after the double bogey. Her 4 under par put her just two strokes behind the first-round leader, fellow Australian Hannah Green.

There’s a logjam of five players right behind Green, and Kemp is tied for seventh with three more going into today’s second round.

Kemp has won 12 European and Australian tournaments since turning pro in 2005. But she has yet to win on the LPGA Tour. This is her 224th try at it.

In 2019 she was runner-up at the Women’s Victorian Open, which was then part of the LPGA Tour for two years.

Kemp’s 2021 season included fourth at the Pure Silk LPGA Championship for one of her seven career top 10s, and Kemp was looking forward to a strong start in 2022.

But she was hit by COVID-19 in January.

“I had a head cold, sore throat and headache for four or five days, and some fatigue. I’m grateful to be vaccinated and that it didn’t get worse,” she said.

Kemp made just one cut in the five tournaments she played in since, but her play Wednesday indicated she’s back to full strength.

“I haven’t played that good all year, so it’s nice to finally get the year started. I felt like I hit a lot of fairways,” she said. “And I putted well, so it was just nice and solid overall.”

It was also spectacular at times, with a bunker hole-out and another on a long chip for birdie.

“I missed the cut by one at ANA and I sort of trended slowly, very slowly in the right direction. But it’s been super frustrating, and it’s just nice that, yeah, I guess I remained patient and just kept doing the same thing.

“So I’ve been doing exactly the same; just stayed patient.”

That included taking what the wind would allow her.

“I actually didn’t find it crazy … I didn’t find it long, and I’m not a very long hitter. I think I just hit really good drives … I kept it lower on the into-the-wind holes and it got out there a little bit further,” Kemp said.

“But, yeah, I didn’t have too many longer clubs in today. It was nice. I think we had a lot of crosswinds, but I sort of shaped it in the way that I would get some of downwind on the crosswind.”