Chandni Canan BauerJeeno Thitikul and Polly Mack have reached the same place at the LOTTE Championship by rather different routes.
Thitikul, the world No. 2 with three LPGA Tour wins already this season, has made contending look suspiciously routine. Mack, ranked No. 316 in the Rolex Rankings, had missed eight consecutive cuts before finally surviving the weekend at last week’s Walmart NW Arkansas Championship.
Now both sit at 12-under after 36 holes, one stroke clear of Ina Yoon and Carolina Melgrati, with 71 players making the cut at three-under or better.
Golf does occasionally possess a sense of humour.
Thitikul keeps doing what Thitikul does
There is little surprising about finding Thitikul near the top of an LPGA leaderboard. The more instructive part is how efficiently she has put herself there.
She has made 12 birdies through two rounds and completed her second round without a bogey. In fact, Thitikul and Mack are the only players in the field to have negotiated both opening rounds bogey-free.
For Thitikul, it continues an exceptional run of form. She has finished inside the top 10 in each of her past five starts, a stretch including victory at The Standard Portland Classic, and came into the week after a T9 finish at the FM Championship.
This is also her second time leading after 36 holes this season. The previous occasion came at the Mizuho Americas Open. She won that one.
There is precedent beyond 2026, too. Thitikul has finished inside the top five in five of the seven previous occasions on which she has led after the second round.
Her finish on Friday offered a neat little summary of the confidence currently running through her game. A less-than-perfect pitch to the 18th left her with a putt of roughly 10 to 15 feet, which she holed for birdie.
“The birdie on 18, I mean, I have kind of medium, I would say medium line, not that hard but not that easy up and down. Like I had 30 yards to the pin; my pitch wasn’t that good. I still have like ten or twelve to 15 feet left, but holed the putt, which is kind of really — when you end up with the birdie on ending hole then you feel like you have sweet dream.”
There are worse ways to go to bed with a share of the lead.
Mack finds the week she had been waiting for
Mack’s presence alongside her is the less predictable half of the story.
Her second-round 65 matched her lowest 18-hole score of the season and put her into a 36-hole lead for the first time in her LPGA Tour career.
More strikingly, she has made it through two rounds without a bogey. Mack had recorded only one bogey-free round all season before arriving at the LOTTE Championship.
It is quite a time to double the collection.
The German has seven made cuts from 18 starts this season and one top-10 finish, a T4 at the ShopRite LPGA powered by Wakefern. Her career record contains three LPGA Tour top 10s and no victories, making the contrast with Thitikul’s 10 career titles and 64 top-10 finishes difficult to miss.
Yet nothing about Mack’s assessment suggested she regarded her position as an accident.
“It’s kind of coming together what I’ve been working through also this year. I mean, tee shots are really strong right now, which helps me a lot out here on this course. Then I’ve worked a lot on approach shots which is coming together. Putting is really smooth. Yeah, this course plays to my advantage and I’m just playing it to my advantage.”
That is generally a useful arrangement.
Yoon and Melgrati are one swing away
There is hardly room for the leaders to become comfortable.
Ina Yoon and Carolina Melgrati sit one shot behind at 11-under, and both have arrived there by making birdies in considerable quantities.
Yoon leads the field with 15 through 36 holes and has needed just 51 putts. Her opening two rounds also mark the first time she has started an event with consecutive scores in the 60s since the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
Her second round might have unravelled after a triple bogey. It did not.
“I mean, at the time it was really hard to control. Like I was so mad at myself. But Kevin helped me to get back to normal, and put a lot of effort to just Mo on. So I think that helped a lot. Yeah, thankfully made many birdies after that. My shot was great today, so, yeah, I’m pretty happy about it.”
Melgrati’s route was rather tidier at the finish. She birdied each of her final three holes to move within one of the lead, posting a second-round 65 — her lowest round of her rookie season.
She has produced 14 birdies through 36 holes, second only to Yoon in the field, after missing three cuts in her previous four starts.
“I was looking forward to having a score like this for a while now because, I mean, I felt like I just needed to put all the pieces together in my game,” Melgrati said. “I was just like patiently waiting for that to happen, so, yes, it’s nice.”
Patience looks considerably more attractive when it finishes with three straight birdies.
Hwang remains within range
Defending champion Youmin Hwang is further back at six-under in a share of 22nd place.
She has recorded nine birdies and one bogey through the opening 36 holes, with her aggregate tying her second-lowest 36-hole score of the season.
The difficulty is that the leaders have scarcely made a mistake.
With Thitikul and Mack both bogey-free through two rounds and Yoon and Melgrati producing 29 birdies between them, standing still is likely to feel suspiciously similar to moving backwards.
Big names depart before the weekend
The cut fell at three-under, with 71 players advancing.
Among those missing the weekend were Lydia Ko, Hannah Green, Leona Maguire and Hyo Joo Kim — an unusually decorated group to find themselves with free time before Saturday.
For those remaining, the leaderboard has developed exactly the sort of imbalance that tends to make tournament golf interesting.
One co-leader has three victories this season, 10 in her LPGA career and a habit of turning 36-hole leads into top-five finishes.
The other had gone eight tournaments without making a cut before last week and had only one bogey-free round all year before arriving here.
After two rounds, neither has dropped a shot.
Something will eventually have to give.
