Juliana Hung (洪玉霖), who has switched her nationality from New Zealand to Taiwan recently, made the top of the Round 1 leaderboard on Thursday at the 2022 CTBC Invitational.

Hung was the lone player to break par at 71, leading Japan LPGA major titlist Teresa Lu (盧曉晴), last week’s Taiwan Mobile Open champ Wu Chia-Yen (吳佳晏), and Chang Ching-Ling (張靖翎) by two shots.

This is the 11th CTBC event, never absent from the TLPGA Tour since 2012. For the first time, the tournament decided to move into the newly renovated Kaohsiung Golf & Country Club, which features fast greens with the speed measured at 10.1 today, posting some tricky challenges for the players.

Hung, the only player to keep a red figure, followed a conservative game plan in order to adjust her game in the new environments, made two birdies and just one bogey to find the lead.

“A lot of pins were tucked and you couldn’t really find many birdies. So I tried to stay consistent and patient, made quite a lot of nice par putts, which kept me in good position,” said Hung.

Still, she had left some mid-range birdie putts on the 4th, 10th, and the final hole, which could have further expanded her cushion, but Hung felt she was happy with how well she fared the day one unpredictabilities.

With two victories under her belt in the 2022 season, Wu Chia-Yen is maintaining a decent pace after a win fresh from last week, where the 2021 TLPGA Tour money winner broke the record at the Tong Hwa Golf Club with a winning total of 17-under 199.

“I felt great honestly. My putting was not bad considering the difficulty, 29 putts, because the pins were tough, I kind of took the shots lower than usual to try create some bounces to get closer to the pins, which tend to leave some distance,” Wu said, whose scorecard saw only one different mark from Hung --- a double-bogey on the second hole. “I didn’t really make a solid contact on the tee shot, which was carried to the right and went out of bounds. If I would’ve noticed the risks, I probably would try better to avoid that side.”

Chang Ching-Ling managed four birdies from her first six holes to take an early lead, impressively making a 30-footer on 2nd, a 9-footer on 3rd, an 18-footer on 6th, as well as a 16-yard chip-in on 5th. However, a bogey on the 7th seemed to break all the momentum, and she never placed a foot forward, dropping four more shots to close the round on 1-over.

Teresa Lu got off to an ideal start, too, pouring in two consecutive birdies on the first two holes, before she took a major setback with four bogeys in a row before the turn. She regrouped well and bounced back into a tie for second with a final-hole birdie. “Actually, I like the green speed here. The yardage also created some scoring chances for big hitters like me. I’m definitely going to try my best to take them when they come,” Lu said, who used three birdies and four bogeys at the end of the day to shoot a 73, trailing Hung by two.

Chien Pei-Yun (錢珮芸), Phoebe Yao (姚宣榆), and Wu Yi-Ching (伍以晴) sit in a three-way tie for fifth with another shot adrift.

The three-round event provides a purse of NT$5 million.

The CTBC Bank is one of the frontrunners in the development of the golf sport in Taiwan. In fact, in 1979, which was 43 years ago, the CTBC hosted the China Trust Cup International Golf Team Championship right here at the Kaohsiung Golf & Country Club.

“Stating from 2011, we launched a new sponsor program to share our support to talented individual golfers. On the women’s side, this year we have eleven ‘CTBC Lady Golf Stars’. We hope they will be able to continue to rise in the game and be the role models for the young generation,” CTBC Vice President Chen G-S spoke of the CTBC roaster, which includes Japan LPGA major titlist Teresa Lu (盧曉晴), Cheng Ssu-Chia (程思嘉), Hou Yu-Sang (侯羽桑), Hou Yu-Chiang (侯羽薔), An Ho-Yu (安禾佑), June Ting (丁子云), Jessica Peng (彭婕), Lin Tze-Han (林子涵), and Chinese player Shih Yuting (石昱婷).