Golf Update: Diana Tham and Aretha Pan qualify the Sime Darby LPGA position
Diana Tham and Aretha Pan have qualified for the inaugural Sime Darby Ladies Professional Golfers Association in October. The event carrying a purse of US$1.8 million will be held at the venue of Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club in Bukit Kiara from Oct 22nd
to 24th.
Diana and Aretha will be joined by three other Malaysian women golfers, Cindy Lee-Pridgen, Jean Chua and Kelly Tan.
Diana took the midway lead on the leader board by giving a fine opening to the national qualifying competition. After posting a score of one-over-par 72, in the first round, Diana knew that low scores were the ultimate requirement of the second day. Although,
she failed to achieve them but she carded a six-over 77 to accumulate the two-day session of 149 strokes.
Talking to the press, Diana said that she had a game plan in her mind for the Friday’s match and that was to deliver the best score of the day, which she ultimately did. The result was that she qualified for the LPGA competition. The LPGA Malaysia is a three-day
stroke play event in which only the top 50 golfers from the Henderson money list will qualify. For an amateur like Diana, this is a big achievement.
As a record, the top 50 golfer’s list starts with Jiyai Shin, Cristie Kerr, Yani Tseng and Suzann Pettersen in the descending order.
Moving forward, according to the organizers, The LPGA Malaysia will be attended by big names like Michelle Wie, Cristie Kerr and Natalie Gulbis. Moreover, world number one Ai Miyazato from Japan will also be seen teeing off at the venue of Kuala Lumpur Golf
& Country Club. According to Diana, she is eager to attend the event in which she will be able to play next to her favourite golfer, Natalie Gulbis.
The leading lady of Malaysian Ladies Amateur Open will be going back to KLGCC to get herself accustomed to the features of the course. She will start her training for the LPGA competition in the first week of October.
Moreover, Aretha Pan too has qualified for the LPGA event. According to her, she is very excited to qualify for the prestigious competition. She states that she is looking towards an awesome experience.
Aretha has been trained in Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Datuk Peter Mojuntin in Kota Kinabalu, under the Sime Darby LPGA Development Programme. This programme ensures and helps a player to keep the mind and body calm. As for Aretha, it will be a great opportunity
to play against the top-ranked LPGA players of the world. This not only will enhance her confidence, but it will also help her learn more skills.
According to the experts, both the ladies performed remarkably well, however, they need to work on their putting, which by par is their weakest spot. Nonetheless, as amateur golfers their game was quite refined. However, Diana lacks confidence and that can
be seen from the way she plans her shot. She aims towards a fairway, taking a shot towards the ravine. This can be a sign of bad driving accuracy but apparently it seems the problem of nervousness and confidence.
This is it for the national qualifying competition which ended on Friday. Diana Tham and Aretha Pan have surged to lead, and thereby they have earned their way to the Sime Darby Ladies Professional golf championship, which will take place at the course of
Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club. Both the ladies are still in their teens, giving the tournament a fine session of pro-am in which the amateurs will get a chance to learn from the veterans.
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