This summer, Celine Boutier won the Amundi Evian Championship for her first major championship. Then the next week in Scotland, she captured the Scottish Open.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise to see her name near the top of the leaderboard in Malaysia at the LPGA’s inaugural Maybank Championship at Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club. Boutier shot 8-under 64 during Friday’s second round to move into a tie for third, two behind leader Jasmine Suwannapura and a shot behind Rose Zhang.
“I feel like I had a lot of really close birdie putts,” Boutier said. “The greens are soft so I was able to hit it a little bit easier to just be aggressive, because the ball is going to stay. I feel like if you can manage to control your distances very well it’s a lot easier when you don’t have to worry about the bounces.”
Boutier was caught in a weather delay Thursday, but she found her stride in the second round, carding the lowest score of the day by two shots.
Suwannapura followed up an opening 9-under 63 with a 69. Meanwhile, Zhang shot 4-under 68 and will be in the final group on Saturday. She’s looking forward for her shot at a second professional win this weekend.
“It would be incredible,” Zhang said. “It’s not really something that I think about a lot. I feel like there is a lot of incredible players out here who can put up incredible numbers, so for me it’s just being able to take that step by step and having that game plan with Ollie, being able to commit to every single shot, and then we’ll go from there. If I end up in that position, I’ll be working my hardest.”