<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI love it,\u201d Yin said. \u201cI always say that the more difficult (the course), the better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yin carded her second straight 69 in the same city where she earned her first LPGA Tour victory in 2023, a couple of months before\u00a0she won the Women\u2019s PGA Championship. She tied for fourth at last year\u2019s U.S. Open at Erin Hills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lee played under par for the second straight day at Riviera, highlighted by back-to-back birdies just before the turn. The new mother\u2019s first two rounds are an extension of a strong start to the season that includes a third-place finish at the\u00a0Mizuho Americas Open\u00a0four weeks ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo win in basically my backyard, where I grew up, would be super cool,\u201d Lee said. I don\u2019t want to get ahead of myself … but if you\u2019d told me I would be in this spot at the beginning of the week, I probably would have started crying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 31-year-old Lee grew up in suburban Valencia and had a stellar junior career before playing at UCLA and embarking on her pro career. She is a two-time Solheim Cup participant, but she has yet to win on the LPGA Tour while managing just two top-10 finishes at 44 majors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to lie, it\u2019s been very tough,\u201d Lee said. \u201cI\u2019ve gone through a few stages, a few slumps, if you want to call it, in my career, even since I was like 15 years old. … no matter what I did, no matter how much I practiced, it just wasn\u2019t going my way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lee then took most of last year off for the birth of her son, Levi. While she says her sleep rhythms are regularly interrupted by her 13-month-old these days, her parents and extended family in Valencia have relieved some of the burden during the Open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Levi was in attendance for Friday\u2019s round, but Lee\u2019s partner only brought him out to watch the 18th hole because the youngster has a tendency to get excited: He yelled \u201cBall!\u201d during his mom\u2019s backswing at\u00a0The Chevron Championship\u00a0earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With family around her, Lee is finally having the moment she had long anticipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve definitely underachieved what I could have done out here on tour,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely been really frustrating. I\u2019m at a point now where I\u2019ve truly accepted it, but like I said, that\u2019s part of why I want to come back and play. I feel like I was so close so many times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kim was one shot behind Kupcho after the opening round, and she was thrust into the lead early in the second despite shooting 1 over on the front nine. She bogeyed the 18th to drop her share of the lead in one of the day\u2019s final groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kupcho scuffled to a second-round 73 after carding the only 66 of the tournament so far on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the players who missed the 36-hole cut were world No. 3 Hyo Joo Kim, three-time major champion Lydia Ko, five-time major champion Yani Tseng and Michelle Wie West, who largely left golf in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 36-year-old Wie West returned to competition last month at the Mizuho Americas Open, but she isn\u2019t currently planning to play beyond this U.S. Open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She shot 7 over at Riviera \u2014 the former club of her late father-in-law, Lakers icon Jerry West \u2014 after using the final year of her exemption from winning the 2014 U.S. Open. Her husband, Jonnie West, was her caddie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cObviously, I would be lying to say I wasn\u2019t disappointed,\u201d Wie West said. \u201cI would have loved to have made the cut today, but I had a blast, honestly, playing here at Riv. Such a special week to have played it, and to have family, friends, a lot of familiar faces coming out. It was a lot of fun. I hit some good shots, hit some good putts and kind of felt that feeling again, which is awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Alison Lee seized a share of the lead at the 81st U.S. Women\u2019s Open on Friday with a second-round 68 in her native Los Angeles area, joining Ruoning Yin at 4-under 138 atop a crowded leaderboard at Riviera. World No. 1 Nelly Korda\u00a0jumped into the hunt for her first Women\u2019s Open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12903"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410324,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410323\/revisions\/410324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}