Sweden\u2019s Rebecca Sorensen carded a sparkling six-under-par 66 at Golf Al Maaden and swept to the top of the leader board on the opening day of the Ladies European Tour\u2019s Lalla Aicha Tour School Final Qualifying in Marrakech, Morocco.<\/p>\n
After a calm and sunny day, the 27-year-old from Grabo holds a one stroke advantage over three other players: Tessa Teachman from the United States, Norwegian Caroline Martens and Austrian amateur Nina Muehl.<\/p>\n
Italian Sophie Sandolo, Denmark\u2019s Julie Tvede and Moroccan Maha Haddioui shot rounds of 68, followed by Britons Heather Macrae, Anna Scott and Hannah Ralph on 69.<\/p>\n
Sorensen, a rookie on the LET this year who made three cuts from seven appearances, birdied the second and bogeyed the sixth to make the turn in level par but picked up six birdies on Al Maaden\u2019s back nine to put herself in pole position to secure a full card and improve her Tour status from 2013.<\/p>\n
Teachman was the only player in the top ten positions who played on the longer Samanah Golf Course and the 24-year-old from Baton Rouge in Louisiana posted five birdies, including four on the back nine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe course is in amazing condition and the greens are true and quick. I\u2019m very impressed by everything around here. It\u2019s been great,\u201d said the graduate of Louisiana State University.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my first time across the Atlantic. I\u2019ve played in China in 2011 when we played the World University Games and that was my first international trip and then I\u2019ve crossed the Atlantic now. I\u2019ve really enjoyed it; it\u2019s been great. I want to see as much of the world as I can and play golf.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just hit it really well and hit it close a lot, which was very nice, stress free. I made a lot of putts and missed a couple still. There are a lot of opportunities out there. I played last week in the pre-qualifier in Rabat and it was tight and tough. It\u2019s very nice to come here and you are rewarded for your good shots. It\u2019s a little bit more breathing room out there. I was playing well in Rabat but scores were high and it\u2019s nice to come here and finally get some scores under par.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next best scores on the Samanah Course were 70s, recorded by Spain\u2019s Virginia Espejo and Swedish duo Josefin Janson and Isabella Ramsay. They share 11th position with New Zealand\u2019s Cathryn Bristow, South African Kim Williams and Germany\u2019s Nina Holleder, who played their first rounds on the Al Maaden Course.<\/p>\n
Espejo\u2019s score was particularly impressive considering that she played through injury. \u201cThe bottom of my foot is inflamed and I have a sprained ankle which means no practice, so I won\u2019t get tired!\u201d said the LET rookie from Madrid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hit it alright off the tee, because it\u2019s an open course, my shots into the greens were awful. I missed so many greens but then I made so many putts, I think I had under 25 putts, it was crazy. My putting was the best part of my game by far but it\u2019s very tough when you have very short putts to aim outside of the hole. On a straight putt you don\u2019t believe it and try to find breaks that aren\u2019t there. I trusted the lines that I read and just hit the putts where I thought they were going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janson also considered the greens as Samanah\u2019s greatest defence: \u201cI started off really well and kept the birdies coming but made a couple of bogeys at the end. I played really solid and hit the ball good. The greens are perfect and tough if you are too far from the pin because they are very slopey but I put a good speed on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The field will play the Samanah and Al Maaden courses alternately for the first four rounds, followed by a cut to the leading 60 players and ties. The final round will be played at Samanah Golf Club. At the end of 90 holes on Wednesday, the top 30 players and ties from a field of 95 will earn their full cards for the 2014 Ladies European Tour (in category 8a).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sweden\u2019s Rebecca Sorensen carded a sparkling six-under-par 66 at Golf Al Maaden and swept to the top of the leader board on the opening day of the Ladies European Tour\u2019s Lalla Aicha Tour School Final Qualifying in Marrakech, Morocco. After a calm and sunny day, the 27-year-old from Grabo holds a one stroke advantage over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6161,"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-6159","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\/6159","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=6159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}