South African Lee-Anne Pace and Celine Herbin of France are tied for the halfway lead in the Open de Espa\u00f1a after two rounds at Club de Campo Villa de Madrid.<\/p>\n
After a scorching day with temperatures of 38C, the duo sits at eight-under-par, with rookie professionals Jia Yun Li of China and Isabella Ramsay of Sweden two shots behind.
\nCheyenne Woods of the United States started the day as the outright leader on eight-under but dropped six shots back from the lead at two-under after a second-round of 78.<\/p>\n
The 2010 LET money list winner Pace powered into the lead with a 69, containing four birdies and a solitary bogey. \u201cI played pretty solid: 15 greens today. I didn\u2019t think I struck the ball as well as yesterday but still 15 greens, 15 birdie chances. When I missed it I only just missed the green. I\u2019m just going through a really good time with my golf,\u201d said the current European number two.
\nShe took the heat in her stride and added: \u201cThere are some really hot spots you walk through. When the breeze is there it\u2019s fine but sometimes, like on the ninth tee, that\u2019s hot!\u201d
\nHerbin fired three birdies on the front nine and two on the back, with a bogey on the 15th in a second-round 68.
\n\u201cI\u2019m happy with my game: pretty steady, only one bogey: 32 holes without a bogey, which is my record. I didn\u2019t miss too many shots. I hit 17 greens, yesterday 16 greens, so I\u2019m very happy with my game and enjoying it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old second season LET player feels at home in Spain as she lives in Santander and is coached by Vicente Ballesteros, who is also her caddie.
\n\u201cMy coach knows the course very well, so he\u2019s helping me a lot. He\u2019s Seve\u2019s brother, Vicente,\u201d said Herbin, adding: \u201cSpain is my second home. I\u2019m French but I\u2019ve been living in Spain for the last seven years.\u201d<\/p>\n
For 24-year-old LET rookie Li, from Guangzhou, the hot conditions were normal: \u201cLast week I was in Shanghai and it was even hotter so here is fine for me.\u201d
\nShe shot a 66 in a co-sanctioned China\/Korean LPGA event a fortnight ago and added: \u201cI\u2019ve been having some good rounds I just need to be a bit more consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2011 Spanish Open winner Melissa Reid and Frenchwoman Valentine Derrey share fifth on five-under-par, with a further four players a stroke further behind: Klara Spilkova, Tania Elosegui, Joanna Klatten and Mikaela Parmlid.
\nWoods was still smiling and posing for photographs with local children after her round, despite having taken 14 shots more than the previous day.<\/p>\n
Speaking after her round, she said: \u201cI survived! The course kicked my butt but I\u2019m alive. I get to play tomorrow so that\u2019s good and I definitely learned a lot.
\n\u201cAfter yesterday it\u2019s hard to shoot eight under and come back and not have the expectations to play that well again so it\u2019s my first year and that was my first time being in the lead and it was definitely exciting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t make many putts today and then again I didn\u2019t give myself that many chances. I wasn\u2019t as sharp as yesterday.
\n\u201cThis is golf and it\u2019s the reason why I love the game. You never know what to expect, every day is different and I\u2019m just going to go back out tomorrow and grind it out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African Lee-Anne Pace and Celine Herbin of France are tied for the halfway lead in the Open de Espa\u00f1a after two rounds at Club de Campo Villa de Madrid. After a scorching day with temperatures of 38C, the duo sits at eight-under-par, with rookie professionals Jia Yun Li of China and Isabella Ramsay of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}