Corona Championship - 3rd Round

Lorena Ochoa (-20) holds a slim one-shot lead going into the final round of the Corona Championship.  Suzann Pettersen remains in second place at -19, Na Yeon Choi is in third at -15 while three players - Wendy Ward, Morgan Pressel and Irene Cho - are tied for fourth at -14.

Twice on Saturday it appeared Ochoa was continuing her runaway.  Through seven holes she had stretched the margin to four strokes.  Pettersen cut it in half with an eagle at the par-5 8^th.  Both final group players birdied the 9^th but Lorena went on to do the same at 10 and 11 to regain her four shot lead.  Three holes later, however, it was all gone.  A two-shot swing at 12 - Pettersen birdie, Ochoa bogey - and a double-bogey at 14 by the defending champion created a tie for the lead with Choi only one shot behind and gave a whole bunch of players a reason to think they were back in contention.

Lorena immediately turned things around with a birdie at 15, which Suzann matched.  After exchanging pars at 16, Ochoa went back in front with a birdie at 17 and finished there when the final twosome each parred 18.  Choi was playing beautifully, still without a bogey on the week until she stumbled late with squares on her card at 17 and 18 to fall from only one behind through 14 to five behind going to Sunday.

Moving Day was a positive thing for Ward (66), Pressel (67), Cho (68), Cristie Kerr (66 T7 -13), Jimin Jeong (66 T10 -11), Anna Nordqvist (67 T10 -11) and Charlotte Mayorkas (66 T21 -8).  Not so very much positive results were recorded by Michelle Wie, Karrie Webb (both 72 T13 -10), Kristy McPherson (73 T13 -10) and Eunjung Yi (74 T26 -7).  The way the scoring has been throughout the event, if you don't put up a round in the 60s, you're losing ground to everybody in the Top 10.

The six players mentioned in my opening paragraph are the only ones within six shots to start the final round.  With so few in that window, we could expand the list of possible contenders to include Yani Tseng and Cristie Kerr (both -13 and seven back), outstanding players who both have the talent to go very low.  But the level of play Lorena and Suzann are sustaining as they duke it out suggests that we should be subtracting candidates from the contenders list rather than adding them.  I'm looking at Sunday from a match-play perspective, with two of the world's best going head-to-head.