The world’s No 1 female player, Inbee Park, fired a course record 62 at Mission Hills on Saturday to move into a tie for the lead at the Ladies European Tour's World Ladies Championship in Haikou, China.
Park's sensational bogey-free 11-under par round, sets up what should be a thrilling mano-a-mano with Suzann Pettersen, the world's No 2 who carded a seven-under 66 to join the Korean at 18-under.The score in relation to par, ties the all-time low round for 18 holes on the Ladies European Tour, set by six other players.
Park stated to show the hot hand early when she birdied three of the first six holes. But went supernova in the middle of the round with six successive birdies from the ninth. She picked up a further shot at the 16th and birdied the closing par-five as well, where Park missed a chance at a 61 by missing a short eagle putt.
Pettersen, the leader through the first two rounds, didn’t get off to a reeling start as she bogeyed the opening hole but bounced back nicely to register eight birdies including one at the closing hole to end the day level with Park.
Park said: "It's my career best round today so obviously it was a fantastic round. The last couple of days the putting has been really hard. These greens are a little bit grainy and much slower.
"We played on very fast greens the last two weeks and I just came here and I wasn't used to the greens. I had a lot of putts the last few days but today everything seemed like it was going the right way and I made a lot of putts.
"My ball striking is pretty much really similar for three days but just the putting. Everything I looked at today seemed like it was going in."
Park and Pettersen have a four-stroke lead over South Korea's Ye Na Chung (68) with Thailand's Ariya Jutanugarn (67) a further shot back at 13-under 206. The World’s No. 5, South Korean Yeon Ryu (70), is in solo fifth-place at 12-under 207.
On the Team side of the competition, the Korean team of Park and Ryu now lead by 16 strokes over the USA Team comprised of Amelia Lewis and Beth Allen, with a three-round aggregate of 408.
From the original 18 teams, there are now seven left in the competition, shooting for a prize pool of US$100,000.
Minjee Lee, the world’s Top Amateur, is the leading Amateur side of the competition in a share of sixth place with two other players on 11-under, six shots ahead of China’s Jing Yan.
World No.7 Shanshan Feng is the leading Chinese player in 18th place on six-under, only one stroke clear of Lin Xi Yu and Yan, the leading amateur at the event when Feng won in 2012.