Haru Nomura outlasts Cristie Kerr on 6th hole of LPGA Texas Shootout playoff

A difficult scoring day on Sunday at Las Colinas Country Club resulted in a tough-to-watch playoff at the LPGA’s Volunteers of America Texas Shootout, as Haru Nomura and Cristie Kerr went up and down the par-5 18th over and over again until Nomura finally managed to make the lone playoff birdie on her sixth crack at the hole to rack up the win.

The playoff was set up in the first place by Nomura’s 17th-hole struggle, needing to make a clutch 11-footer for double bogey on the dicey par 3 just to trail Kerr by a shot heading to the final hole of regulation. Battling in 30mph winds, Nomura backed off her birdie putt on the 72nd hole several times before ramming it in to force sudden death with a game Kerr.

In extra holes, however, the pace ground to a near halt at times with rulings, wind and nerves all proving factors. It also didn’t help that the fairway of the par 5 was nearly impossible to hit, cambered to encourage balls to bounce from left to right and into the right rough which was scattered with trees guarding the watery side of the hole. Time and again, the players had to choose to layup or work the ball through awkward shots on a poor design, leading to haphazard shots at a firm green.

Nomura cracked the code on the sixth try, hitting a fairway wood from the short stuff with her second which found the right alleyway up the fairway and onto the green. Though she left her eagle putt a revolution or two short, her easy birdie forced Kerr to make her bid to extend the playoff. When she couldn’t, Nomura had won, stopping the playoff from almost surely extending to Monday.

Kerr, who was looking for her second consecutive LPGA win, lamented missing a birdie conversion on the second playoff hole.

“I had her on that second playoff hole when I was behind the green there and I just made an error and you can’t do that in playoffs,” Kerr said. “You have to take advantage of when you have the chance and I didn’t do that, so I lost.”

Devil Ball Golf – Golf – Yahoo Sports

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