Leona Maguire is projected to be the last player into the field for next week’s CME Group Tour Championship after she fell to the 60th and final spot after an opening 72 at the Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican.
Maguire is in a share of 91st place on two-over which is eight shots off the pace set by Charley Hull and Jiwon Jon in Belleair.
Teeing off in 57th place on the CME Group Rankings with the top-60 and ties progressing to the season finale next week, Maguire started well on the back nine, carding eight pars and a birdie on the 16th.
But things unravelled for her on her way to the club house as she dropped shots at the 2nd, 5th and 8th to tumble down the leaderboard and leave her with work to do to secure her spot at the Tour Championship.
Needing a victory to have a chance to make it into the CME Group Tour Championship, Jeon put on a winning performance in her opening round.
Starting on the back nine, she recorded two birdies over her first five holes and added another on No. 17 before the first of two blemishes came after she bogeyed No. 18. Making the turn at 2-under, Jeon came out firing on the front nine, erasing that mistake with a birdie on No. 1 before stepping up to the tee box on No. 3.
With her 5-hybrid (22-degree) in hand, she stepped up to her tee shot and knocked her ball in the hole from 177 yards on the par 3 to record her third career ace on the LPGA Tour.
“I’m using meters, so it was 169 or six meters, I believe,” Jeon said about her ace. “Wind was coming off the left, little into. I had exactly the same yardage the last hole for the second shot, so I was talking to Bruce (Lowe), my caddie, like, ‘Just hit the same shot?’ He was like, ‘Yeah.’ Then I hit it and then I saw the one bounce and went in the hole. It was very cool to see the hole-in-one actually going into the hole.”
Jeon became just the fourth player since 1991 to record three hole-in-ones in a single season and is the first player since Danielle Kang in 2014 to do so.
Hull, who tied the best 18-hole score of her career with her opening-round 64. Hull started her day on the back nine as well and started her round with a birdie on No. 10 followed by two more on Nos. 14 and 15. She added her lone bogey of the day on No. 17 but quickly regained her footing with a birdie on No. 18 before making the turn. She added another birdie to her total on No. 1, and Hull then bogey-free the rest of her round, adding her sixth and seventh birdies on Nos. 7 and 8 to hold the third lead or co-lead of her career and her second this season.
“I felt like I played pretty solid,” Hull said. “Hit it pretty well and putted pretty well. I made a bit of a silly bogey on my 8th hole, but it was the 17th hole of the golf course because I started on the back nine. Just three-whacked it. Apart from that, I didn’t really leave much out there. Just one birdie putt. I think it was on my fifth hole on the back nine. But, apart from that, I played pretty well.”