South Korea’s A Lim Kim, four years removed from her lone LPGA victory, shot a 6-under-par 66 on Wednesday and holds a one-stroke lead after the first round of the Lotte Championship at Ewa Beach, Hawaii.
Five players are tied for second after carding a 5-under 67 at Hoakalei Country Club: the Philippines’ Bianca Pagdanganan, China’s Ruixin Liu, Germany’s Polly Mack, France’s Perrine Delacour and Taiwan’s Peiyun Chien.
Canada’s Savannah Grewal, Russia’s Nataliya Guseva and Japan’s Yuri Yoshida are tied for seventh at 4 under. Eleven players share 10th place at 3 under.
Kim, 29, captured the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open at the Champions Club in Houston during her major championship debut. She has since finished in the top 10 at majors three times, including a tie for ninth at the Chevron Championship this year, but she has yet to post another victory in any event.
Now she sits on top of a leaderboard following the first round for the first time since the 2021 Walmart NW Arkansas Championship.
Asked how that would affect her approach, she said, “Same as last week, two weeks ago. My prepare and process, everything is same, same as every weeks. I’m going to focus on speed control, putting speed control, and then wedge number game.”
Kim got off to a stellar start on Wednesday, recording an eagle on the par-5 first hole and adding birdies at the third and fifth holes. The rest of her round was bumpier, as she added four birdies and two bogeys.
Pagdanganan also began well, producing four birdies and two pars through the first six holes. She was 6 under par through 15 holes before closing bogey-bogey-birdie.
“The wind picked up a little bit towards the end of my round so that was quite the change,” Pagdanganan said. “Overall I’m pretty satisfied how I played. I took advantage of all the birdie putts that I had; gave myself a lot of opportunities.
“But at the same time, still managed to play smart out there. Again, with the conditions, it’s easy to get impatient, so making sure that I’m smart with every decision that I make out there helped me.”
Liu began with three consecutive birdies and ended her day with seven birdies and two bogeys.
Delacour posted four consecutive birdies from No. 2 to No. 5. Mack had a run of three straight birdies from No. 3 to No. 5, and Chien birdied Nos. 1, 2 and 3.
Defending champion Grace Kim of Australia shot an even-par 72 and is right on the projected cut line.