Renuka Suksukont of Thailand used a 3-under 69 to claim the sole first-round lead at the US$80,000 ICTSI Philippine Ladies Masters. Hanna Chen (陳子涵) of Taiwan sit just one shot back at solo second. The event is played at The Country Club in Laguna, Philippines.

Taiwan’s Lee Tai-Ling (李黛翎), Wu Yi-Ching (伍以晴), amateur Hung Jo-Hua (洪若華), Korean Hwang Min Jeong, Thai Ploychompoo Wilairungrueng, and local Filipino hope Yuka Saso formed a six-player group who are with two strokes off.

Suksukont authored the day’s most colorful scorecard, mixing an eagle, two bogeys, one triple-bogey with six birdies.

She notched three birdies in a row from the 2nd to 4th, but spent her earnings all away in the next two holes with a bogey on the 5th and a triple-bogey on the par-3 6th. Suksukont bounced right back onto the 7th to knock off a fourth birdie of the day, followed by an eagle play on the 8th hole.

Her roller-coaster ride was a bit tamed into the inward nine, converting just a pair of birdie putts on the par-5s and carding a lone bogey on the 12th to finish with a 34-35 69, putting her at the summit of the leaderboard.

Satisfied of her high-percentage approach to the game today, Hanna Chen “escaped all the traps,” as she put it, and scored four birdies with two birdies to leave her just a one-shot gap off the lead. The par-3 eleventh was playing long and straight against the wind in Chen’s turn, but her 3-wood tee shot was perfectly judged and sailed onto the green, hugged by two bunkers, to just six feet from the flag, later giving her a birdie and a nice confidence boost as she holed the twelfth and earned a second consecutive birdie using a chip wedge from eight yards.

“It was hard enough to cope with the weather with the sudden downpours,” said Chen. “But the hardest part is to stop the ball on those tight greens. They can really catch you out!” She needed 31 putts, with the longest successful being from 21 feet on the fourth hole when she made birdie.

Off from the back nine, Wu Yi-Ching used only 25 putts throughout Thursday making six birdies, but she also leaked plenty of mistakes leading to five bogeys – three in a row in the span of hole no.14 to 16 -- which dragged her down into the six-way tie for third at 71.

“I’ll give myself a 70 out of 100. I was struggling with my club head speed which made it really tough to generate the distance I was supposed to have,” said Wu. “That gave me a lot of pressure as well on my second shots, but I tried to stay calm and hit a few pretty good shots on the right spots of the greens to help me stay on the front of the leaderboard.”

Lee Tai-Ling hit eleven fairways out of fourteen and capitalized on a decent putting form, needing just 29 putts in the first-round, to sit also two shots back. She brilliantly flew her second shot on the par-4 16th from 180 yards to land just one foot from the hole that gave her a virtual tap-in, which successfully contributed to one of her three birdies for the day.

“It was key on this course to place the ball on the easier spots. You got to read the slopes well enough to earn good scores,” said Lee.

The ICTSI Philippine Ladies Masters is the 15th of 16 legs on the TLPGA Tour, as well as the 10th event of 11 on Ladies Philippine Golf Tour’s (LPGT) 2017 calendar. The tournament is co-organized by the TLPGA, the LPGT, and the China LPGA (CLPGA), making it the very first three-way link-up in TLPGA Tour history. The TLPGA Tour and the LPGT have held hands in promoting women’s golf by putting up professional events for the third straight year.

The LPGT has grown the numbers and participation of the tournaments from the inaugural year of the LPGT in 2013 when there were only six tournaments on the docket, to an eight-leg structure starting in 2014, the LPGT hosts now a double-digit eleven-stage format in the 2017 season. The ICTSI (International Container Terminal Services, Inc.) lends their continued supports as the title sponsor of the LPGT.

An international field of 99 players from the Philippines, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, and Taiwan will battle through a 54-hole stroke-play format in three days. The winner of the tournament on Saturday will receive a US$12,000 paycheck and the runner-up gets US$7,200.

Friday’s second-round action will begin at 07:00 in the morning with the first wave sent off from the first and tenth tee. Final group in the second wave will tee it up at 12:20. A cut will be made on Friday after 36 holes with only the top 60 and ties into the final 18.