Hole 7: (par 5). Se Ri hit her first bad drive in a while, but still managed to land in the fairway. She laid up with an iron, but just missed the fairway on that one. Annika and Se Ri both ended up in almost exactly the same spot, slightly in the left rough near the bunker Grace had been in. Maybe 70 yards to the flag. But Se Ri hit a very poor pitch that made it into a greenside bunker, then hit another bad out that blew well past the hole, leaving her a twenty footer to save par on a hole where she should have been looking at a birdie chance. Tap in bogey, +6.

Hole 8: My thoughts on the course: 'I hope Se Ri gets into the house before she totally blows it, because she's starting to slump a little bit'. Her drive missed the fairway on this tricky hole, and disappeared from view. This is a hole where you do not want to be forced to one putt. But she got a good break on her approach. Her iron was about two feet short of perfect, but a little right, and could have landed in the greenside bunker. Instead, it hit next to the bunker, then took a big hop over the bunker and landed in the rough near the flag. It wasn't too buried, though, and she got her chip out nicely and burned the edge of the hole. This left her only two feet for par. But her putt did a 360 degree roll before dropping. Whewww.....

Davies had a very odd shot here. She chipped about five feet right of the hole. It stopped. Then it slowly started rolling, eventually going in! Gives you an idea of how tricky this green is.

My favorite outfit of the week was this red top and
black shorts combo by Se Ri
Seoul Sisters Photo/Eric Fleming

Powerful iron from Se Ri
Seoul Sisters Photo/Eric Fleming

Hole 9: So Se Ri was at even for the day and still had a chance to improve that. But the last two holes had been a battle for her. Her drive ended up in the darn island bunker in the middle of the fairway. She did not hit a good out, leaving it about 40 yards short of the hole. She pitched it up to about 7 feet, then hit a great great putt that lipped out. You want to talk about an annoying end to an otherwise solid round (although I suppose the golf gods gave her a break on 8 and took it away on 9). So she was at +7, which turned out to be exactly on the cut line. She had just made it to the weekend.

As I was walking up to the green, Se Ri's older sister approached me and asked me about 'Seoul Sisters Magazine'. We had a nice talk, and I gave her a card and suggested she or Se Ri check the site out sometime. If you are reading this, Yoo Ri, hi and welcome!

Summary:
It was all in all a pretty great round for Se Ri. She made a lot of clutch pars, cashed in on a few birdie chances, and was driving the ball just wonderfully. Unfortunately, she kind of let it get away from her towards the end, with three tough holes, but except for that, it seemed that Se Ri had arrived at last.

I went over to the 18th green to watch Mi Hyun finish her round. As it turned out, though, she took too long and I had to leave. But I did have one more interesting experience. Coming into the 18th just then was Jane Park, a young Korean amateur. She was at +7. There were not many fans there, as you can imagine, but there were about fifteen relatives of hers. They were all on pins and needles about whether Jane could make the cut. One of them asked me what stroke she was on, but I didn't know. Jane did go on to make par and make the cut in her first open. It was really nice to see how her family was there to support her dreams.