Bronte Law [above] had to cancel her flight. The 24-year-old from England didn’t expect to shoot 65 in the final round at the LPGA Mediheal Championship. But there she was. Sunday afternoon at Lake Merced, finished with her final round, tied for the lead. She was tied with Sei Young Kim, who had started the day with a three-shot lead. Kim was making the turn when Law finished.
“I had a 5:40 [flight] that I was literally going to run to after I finished my round, so I don’t think I will be making that one,” Law said. “So I guess I will be on the phone with United and try to change that.”
And it’s a good thing that she made that call. Because Law ended up in a three-way playoff with eventual winner Kim and JeonGuen Lee6.
The 5:40 flight had made sense as at the start of the final round, Law was 10 shots off the lead. But the combination of Law shooting the low round of the day and Kim’s slow start left her in a position she wasn’t expecting. Kim [below] opened with a double-bogey, followed by a bogey. The lead gone, she played the rest of the day even to finish with a 75.
The pedigrees of the players in the playoff were quite different. Kim had seven previous LPGA wins and two top-10s this season, which included a second-place finish at the Hugel-Air Premia LA Open the weekend before. Law, ranked 64th in the world, missed the cut in the two events she’d played previous to the LPGA Mediheal Championship. Before this weekend, Law’s best LPGA finish was a sixth place at the Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic and the Thornberry Creek LPGA Classic. Lee6 is in her rookie season, but she’s accomplished on the Korean LPGA Tour and led the US Women’s Open in 2017 as an amateur.
The playoff was short.
The three players teed off the 18th, and Kim made birdie on the short par 5, while Law and Lee6 made pars, both after missing makeable birdie putts.
It was the eighth LPGA win for the 25-year-old from South Korea. And it was one of the hardest. Searching for words to describe it after the win, Kim called the day “frustrating” and “really tough”. In talking about the bogey at the par-3 17th that lost her the lead and put her in a position where she had to make birdie at the 18th to get in the playoff, she spoke poetically. “Almost my heart came out,” said Kim.
She was able to regain enough composure to make birdie at the 18th in regulation, and then again in the playoff.
