LPGA rookie Maria Torres from Puerto Rico followed her opening 65 with a solid 69 in the second round of the Evian Championship on Friday morning to lead outright for the first time in her career.
At eight-under-par after 36 holes, the 23-year-old from San Juan was a stroke ahead of first round co-leader Carlota Ciganda from Spain, who birdied the first hole.
England’s Georgia Hall fired a second consecutive 68 to sit at six-under-par and only two strokes off the lead alongside Wei-Ling Hsu from Taiwan, Korean So Yeon Ryu and Austin Ernst from the USA.
Course conditions were softer than on Thursday after rain overnight and through the early morning, Despite starting bogey-bogey, Torres said that she didn’t let the weather affect her game and she proceeded to make four birdies.
“Not the best start that you wanted, but I don’t know, just keep playing golf and kind of started to roll again. After the two bogeys I’m like, You should start playing right now.”
Hall started slowly with a bogey on the 12th hole but recovered with birdies on 14 and 15 and then came in with two birdies on the front nine, at the par-4 third and par-3 eighth holes.
She hit 12 of 13 fairways, compared with nine in the first round, and said afterwards: “My long game was really good today, I just couldn’t really hole that many putts, so that was a little bit like frustrating, but I holed some good ones as well, so I’m still happy. I’ve worked quite a bit on my putting and chipping. I chipped well today. I didn’t really miss that many greens.”
“You’ve got to have everything kind of going good for you on this golf course because it’s quite tight as well. You’ve got to hit fairways. If you don’t hit fairways, some shots you can’t get to the green.”
