Lacoste Ladies Open Day 3

France’s Joanna Klatten made a strong push at the Lacoste Ladies Open de France with third round six-under-par 65 at Golf du Medoc Resort bringing her within one of World Number one Nelly Korda, setting up for an exciting final round.

Klatten delivers a near perfect back nine to keep the home fans happy

On the traditional moving day, Klatten produced a flawless back nine, with a six-under-par 29 which sliced into Korda’s six-stroke overnight lead as she was only able to sign for a one-under-par 70 in a rain interrupted penultimate round.

Celine Boutier, another home hope, is the star debut performer from last week’s Solheim Cup at Gleneagles and returned a card of four-under-par 67 to end the day in third on seven-under, which means that the last group on Sunday features two French players and Korda.

Celine Boutier makes it two French players in top three!

“I played really solid golf today. Actually, it was the first day when I hit all 14 fairways and that’s a huge advantage because there were loads of birdie looks,” said Klatten, adding: “I was pretty solid with the putting today. For me, golf is all about putting the ball on the fairways and then making the putts: that’s what I did.

The weather had been warm and sunny all week but on Saturday there was a rain delay for one hour and 23 minutes. After striding back out to the 12^th fairway where she left off Klatten did not disappoint the home fans.

“I was expecting them to all go home after the rain delay and they, actually, all came back, which was so awesome. We were absolutely thrilled about it,” said Klatten.  

While Klatten’s putter was on fire on the back-nine today, Korda had a quite a shock. After making the turn at three-under-par 33, holding a comfortable six stroke lead, Korda endured three bogeys against a single birdie in her last nine holes.  

Korda has a tough day in the office but still leads

“I did not play so well on the back-nine after the rain delay. I was not hitting it very good today. I missed a lot more greens than I usually did. I was just not hitting it to the centre and when you do that it makes it a lot harder to make birdies, and then it starts making problems,” she said.

England’s Charlotte Thompson improved after her up and down second round to card a respectable two-under-par 69 leaving her in touch with the leaders in fourth, as she heads into the final round.

Charlotte in Kaboom Town!

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