US Girls' Junior Championship 1st Qualifying Round

SALLY WATSON (69) JT FIFTH

AFTER KIMBERLEY KIM HAS

ASTONISHING ROUND OF 62

South Queensferry girl Sally Watson, now 16 and the only European player in the field, has made a great start to the US girls' junior championship at Tacoma Country & Golf Club, Lakewood in Washington State.

The Scot score a 69 over the par-72, 6,363yd course to have only four players ahead of her at the end of the first qualifying round.

Sally was just getting into her stride as one of the later starters in the big international field when Kimberley Kim posted the astonishing score of 10-under-par 62.
Kim’s score tied Christina Kim for the lowest 18-hole score in a USGA girls’ or women’s championship. Last year, Kimberly Kim became the youngest winner in U.S. Women’s Amateur history.Kimberly Kim, 15, from Hawaii, had 10 birdies and no bogeys over the par-72, 6,391yd course.
She shot 31 on each side, making four birdies on the front nine and six on the back nine, including four in her final five holes. Kim’s score was the lowest of the morning by six shots.
The 64 players with the lowest 36-hole aggregates at the end of play on Tuesday will make up the field for the match-play stages.This is Kimberly Kim’s second scoring record of the year. In May, she shot 10-under 206 at the American Junior Golf Association's Thunderbird International Junior to win by eight shots and break by three strokes the tournament scoring record held by Morgan Pressel (2005) and Belen Mozo (2004), the Spaniard who won both the British girls and women's open amateur titles in 2006.

Sally Watson, pictured above, who came through one of the many nationwide qualifying competitions to get into US girls' junior championship field, began her first qualifying round around 12.30 at the 10th hole. She birdied the par-4 13th but gave the shot back with a bogey at the next. She was level par through her first six holes.

Then Sally started to make things happen. She birdied the long 16th and the short 17th to get to two under the card, then parred the 18th to cover her first nine holes in 35 (two under par).

Sally kept it going with a birdie 3 at the 1st hole - her third birdie in four consecutive holes.

Miss Watson bogeyed the second - only her second slip all day - and then reeled off four straght pars to be still two under par with three to play in her first qualifying round.

Sally showed no signs of tiring. She was able to mark up a fifth birdie of the day at the par-4 seventh, then parred eighth and nine for 34 home - a stellar effort in the biggest Under-18 girls' tournament in the world.

Here's how the leaderboard looks:

Par 72

62 Kimberley Kim (Hawaii).

68 Evan Jensen (Florida), Mina Harigae (California), Kristen Park (California).

69 Sally Watson (Scotland), Demi Frances Runas (California), Stephanie Kono (Hawaii), Madison Pressel (Florida), Courtney Ellenbogen (Virginia), Ha Na Jang (South Korea), Stephanie Kim (New York State), Jennifer johnson (California).

++The projected cut-off point for the 64 qualifiers, based on the first-round scores, is 148. There were 64 scores at 74 and better at the end of the first day.

For lots more really interesting information, you can call up the USGA's championship website on: http://www.usgirlsjunior.org/