Yuta Ikeda leads the Asia-Pacific Panasonic Open after round one
Yuta Ikeda of Japan stormed to the top of the leaderboard, early in the morning, in the opening round of the Asia-Pacific Panasonic Open, on Thursday, September 20, 2012.
The 150 million Yen tournament is being played at the Higashi Hirono Golf Club, and is featuring some of the prominent names on the Asian Tour and the Japan Golf Tour.
The 26-year-old, who has recorded a total of nine victories in Japan, is currently a hot favourite in the field because of his recent form.
In each of the last three tournaments, Ikeda earned second-place finishes. This week, he wants to end the streak by improving one position on the leaderboard.
Right from the beginning of the first round, the Japanese star looked in a great form, as he tried to attack the pins, every time he reached the greens.
In total, he drained nine birdie putts but believes that he could have done better than that. While talking to the Asian Tour’s official website, he stated that he created a number of birdies chances during the first round.
However, he failed to capitalise on some of them and was restrained to a nine-under par opening-round score.
“I will give myself an 80 or 90 points for my round today,” he said. “I was really close in the last two weeks. I started off very well and I hope I can hold it for the last three days. Everything was good. I had some up and downs with my shots but I recovered well”.
“Everything went smooth so I guess that’s why I have no bogeys,” he added. “I’ve had some Asian Tour experience and there are some differences but we are all building our game by watching and seeing how the other talented players are doing”.
Hiroyuki Fujita, Yusaku Miyazato, Katsumasa Miyamoto, Kazuhiro Yamashita and Koumei Oda were tied for the second position, with a seven-under par 64.
Kim Do-Hoon took the sole seventh position, after posting a six-under par 65. Tomohiro Kondo, Masamichi Uehira and Shigeru Nonaka were the other three players, who finished among the top-10 on the leaderboard, by sharing the eighth position.
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