ALPG Tour - NICHOLSON'S 66 LEADS NSW OPEN

(5 February 2010 – Oatlands, NSW)

New Zealand&aposs Sarah Nicholson fired a six-under par 66 to sit atop of the leader board after the opening round of the Bing Lee / Samsung NSW Women&aposs Open today. She will take a slender one shot lead into tomorrow&aposs second round over defending champion, Sydney&aposs Sarah Oh and Japan’s Hiromi Kamata.

The 25-year old was out early in the morning in the relatively calm conditions and used her length to take advantage of the par 5&aposs. Nicholson started on the 12th and birdied the par-5 13th before posting back-to-back bogeys. She composed herself and birdied the next two holes, before parrs at the next four. Nicholson, in her mind, then decided to "play the par 5&aposs on the front as par 4&aposs" resulting in immediate success as she birdied the par 5&aposs 4th, 6th and 8th holes. She then birdied her last two holes of the day the 10th and 11th holes to finish at 6-under.

Four players share fourth place at four-under par 68, Katherine Hull, Rachel Bailey, amateur Stacey Keating who all played in the morning field and another Kiwi, rookie Cathryn Bristow. The morning field certainly had the best of the conditions, the afternoon having to contend with the approaching bad weather before play was suspended at 2.45pm local time for an hour and a quarter. Tied eighth at 3-under par are former champion, England’s Laura Davies, local NSW pair Wendy Doolan and Karen Lunn and 13-year old South Korean amateur Su-Hyun Oh. Another 12 players are tied 12th at two-under par and 30 players in total broke par.

Photo by Paul Melville.