HOLDING STEADY
Olson climbs back, setting stage for a nail-biter entering the final round
Shibuno passes big test for one-shot lead over Olson at Champions.
For much of the afternoon Saturday, Hinako Shibuno seemed serenely above the fray. The 22-yearold Japanese golfer wasn’t making much happen, but nobody else was either. It seemed her eyes were locked on the prize, the $1 million paycheck that will be claimed by Sunday’s winner of the 75th U.S. Women’s Open.
But then a drama-free day changed as dramatically as the sky above Champions Golf Club. When the clouds and gloom gave way to, finally, a bit of brilliant sunshine, Amy Olson transformed what was beginning to look like a coronation into what could be a nail-biting, donnybrook finish, weather permitting. Rain is a given. The only question is how much will fall and when
Through her first 13 holes, Shibuno resolutely stayed the course, playing it safe and resisting any temptation to openly fret while multiple players ahead of her on the Cypress Creek course made only modest noise and fleeting moves. Ironically, at least early on, Olson wasn’t among them. She turned the corner 1over, in fact.
With a birdie at 13, the 28year-old North Dakotan finally announced her intentions. Another, at 17, turned more heads. There, she would drop her 8-iron approach less than 3 feet from the pin. Shibuno appears to have noticed.
“I was very nervous,” she admitted.
And, it turns out, she had been all along. Shibuno’s lone birdie came on the par-5 fifth hole, and her shaky response to Olson’s closing charge would be bogeys at 14 and 18. On the latter, a bunker shot and a missed 12-footer trimmed her lead to a single shot. After opening with a 68 and a 67, her 3-over 74 was glaringly conspicuous, although among the nominal contenders when play began, only Olson’s 71 even equaled par. None of the others broke par on the back side either.
The tournament’s firstround leader — Olson had fashioned a sparkling 67 that included a hole-in-one — was four shots back when play began. And because she’s still chasing her first pro title after numbingly routine success as a collegian at North Dakota State, what happens over the final 18 holes looms as a compelling story.
“I’m really pleased with how I played,” Olson said. “It was such a grind. Pars were a great score on every single hole today. Fortunately, I made a couple good birdies, especially the one on 17 coming in (and had) some really solid par putts. That’s really what it comes down to: making those puttswhether they’re for birdie or par.”
Olson’s 20 collegiate titles are three more than anyone else has ever collected, making her professional drought that much more conspicuous. The woman closest behind her in the college ranks, Julie Inkster, went on to accumulate 45 first-place paychecks, seven of them at majors.
Olson insists she can live a good life whatever happens on the golf course, but ...
“Obviously,” she said, “(winning) would be a huge accomplishment, something that you dream about as a kid. But obviously that’s a long way away. My whole goal is to really stay in the moment and not get ahead of myself.”
As for Shibuno, this may be her U.S. Open debut, but it ain’t her first rodeo, as we’re wont to say in Texas. She’s not “starting from scratch,” as she said shewas when she ambushed the field in early August of 2019, sneaking away from England’s Woburn Golf Club with a one-stroke victory in the AIG British Open, the first tournament she played outside of Japan. Expectations come with different pressures, though. Asked why she had the jitters, Shibuno replied, “Because I was on top of everybody. All the holes seemed very difficult to me.”
Olson, having learned from years of hard knocks on the tour, spoke of the importance of “mental fortitude and perspective.” She said, “You can never get too high. You can never get too low. I’ve definitely had some times of adversity already this week, so I’m proud of how I’ve bounced back and just never given up.”
Which, of course, sums up her pro career, too.
Ariya Jutanugarn, the 2018 champion and the most credentialed player on the leaderboard with two major titles and five top-five finishes, was a threat to Shibuno early on when she got to 4-under with a second birdie on the par-5 fifth hole. But that was as close as the 25-year-old Thai— her country’s only winner of a major, male or female — came to making a serious move. A bogey quickly followed on six, and a double bogey on 11, where she three-putted from about 22 feet, sank her chances of staying close. Her 74 left her five swings off the pace.
Jutanugarn’s older sister Moriya, 26, kept the heat on a bit longer, climbing to within two shots of the front-runner with a birdie on 13. But a bogey followed on the next hole that could have doomed her chances if Shibuno hadn’t wavered. She finished in a third-place tie, three back, with South Korean Ji Yeong2 Kim, whose 67 was by far the day’s most sparkling round.
Linn Grant, one of two amateurs in the top five through 36 holes and the only player other than Shibuno to score in the 60s over the first two days, imploded on the 10th hole, ultimately taking a quadruple bogey after her approach shot rolled into water and she three-putted.
Another amateur squarely in the mix through Friday, 22-year-old Texas Longhorn golfer Kaitlyn Papp, at least didn’t lose further ground to Shibuno, also coming in with a 74.
“I’m proud of myself for staying patient today,” Papp said. “I didn’t play aswell as I wanted to. I think I’m going to go hit a few balls on the range and just see what tomorrow brings me.”
She is, after all, essentially playing with house money, even if she’s not playing for money.
“I try not to set expectations for myself, especially thisweek,” Papp said. “I just try to do the best I can on the golf course with what I have that week … just try to be myself the whole time and just kind of block everything out of what’s going on around me.”
Tour rookie YeaLimi Noh, a 19-year-old from San Francisco who had also made a resounding splash for herself as a dominant amateur, looked like she might be reeling in Shibuno after she finished the front nine with three consecutive birdies. But bogeys on 13 and 15 cooled her jets. Noh, Papp and two others are tied for fifth, four swings back.
Noh was tied for the 54hole lead in the LPGA Volunteers of America tournament last week but couldn’t close the deal. At her age, however, time is hardly of the essence.
“Last week definitely gave me a lot of confidence,” she said, dwelling on the positives of at least contending, if not winning. “I’m just hoping to play my best and not have any regrets.”