LPGA sets up 96-yard par 3, and of course there were holes-in-one

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Three aces came in a flurry during the third round of the LPGA Tour’s Maybank Championship on one of the shortest par-3s the tour plays. The 96-yard par-3 fourth at Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club in Malaysia was playing 32 yards shorter than in the second round.

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Emily Kristine Pedersen, the long-driving Dane who played all five sessions for Team Europe during this year’s Solheim Cup, aced the hole with a 55-degree wedge to jump her to a four-under start through four holes and get to eight under for the tournament. The hole-in-one comes just 13 months after Pedersen, 28, hit the second ace in Solheim Cup history at Finca Cortesin. Pederson said after the round that was her fifth overall hole-in-one and third in competition.

As Kristen Gillman, a 27-year-old who took advantage of a birdie-eagle finish at last year’s Epson Tour Championship to secure an LPGA card for this season, stepped to the fourth tee, broadcaster Ewan Porter dropped a prediction to his broadcast partner Trish Johnson.

“There will be more than one ace here today Trish, don’t you think?” Porter posited.

Gillman’s backswing started in the middle of his call, proving the foresight of his prediction as her ball landed right in front of the cup and rolled in, taking her to 10 under par and in contention for her first career victory. Johnson aptly called Porter “Nostradamus” for his foresight.

Later in the round, ace No. 3 fell in at the fourth, courtesy of nine-time LPGA winner Anna Nordqvist.

The aces for Gillman, a two-time U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, and Pederson moved them up the leaderboard and, crucially, farther up the projected CME points list. Pedersen and Gillman, 83rd and 76th, respectively, at the start of the tournament, need to get into the top 60 by the end of The Annika in mid-November to be eligible for the CME Tour Championship and its lucrative $11 million purse.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com