Jeeno Thitikul holds a 3-shot lead over Sei Young Kim after two rounds of the CME Group Tour Championship. Thitikul sits at 14-under.
Thitikul shot the lowest score of round two with a 9-under-63 to sit atop the leaderboard. She started off her round with back-to-back birdies on the first two holes. Starting at hole eight, she birdied four consecutive holes. Two more birdies on the back nine saw Thitikul shoot 63 to tie the 36-hole tournament scoring record (130) and one shy of the course record.
However, Thitikul isn’t taking the championship for granted. She said, “When you talk to others everyone might talk the same and then might thought the same because you came here as the world No. 1, but obviously what number are you has the same chance as everyone if you starting any week. So this is any week as well. Tomorrow it’s a new day. Sunday is a new day. Everything can happen with golf.”
Kim, the 2019 champion, shot 66 (-6) with eight birdies and two bogeys during the second round. She birdied five holes in a six-hole span with the one miss being a bogey on the par-3 12th hole.
Kim played with Thitikul, saying “Front nine kind of boring play. I couldn’t make a lot of birdies…I didn’t touch Jeeno’s play. So after turned nine I was like, oh, it’s not right. I have to change something. So I was like, okay, I need more birdie.”
First round leader Somi Lee is tied with Nasa Hataoka in third place at 10-under. Lee shot a 2-under-70 that included five birdies and three bogeys.
Nelly Korda sits in a tie for fifth with three other golfers after shooting an 8-under-64 in round two. She started and ended her round with back-to-back birdies. After missing six greens in regulation in round one, she only missed two in the second round. This led to nine birdies in round two compared to the three she made in round one.
“I would say yesterday was just missing by centimeters,” said Korda. “They were burning edges, lipping out. I’m always saying like this has been kind of the common theme this year. I feel like I played so much better than my score has shown.”
Tee times for the third round start at 8:00am ET and have been reshuffled according to score. You can watch starting at 2:00pm ET on CNBC.
