#VicOpen finish reignites Kemp & # 039; s season

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For most of the Saturday afternoon, Sarah Kemp was cut out of the third round line and is considering a budget-conscious trip to Adelaide.

She might now consider finding Teresa Lu and buying her a cider.

Lu made Saturday a late triple-bogey in strong winds that brought Kemp back to the Sunday field – a seemingly incidental gift that might change the life of the New South Welshwoman.

That was still not the case when Kemp's idiosyncratic ride up in the first hole of her last round found an unplayable lie, the forerunner of a double bogey who dropped her in total to three.

At that moment she was 13 strokes behind night leader Kim Kaufman, who had to turn away.

Four short hours later, when she rolled calmly in a 3m birdie putt on the 18th green, Kemp had drawn an astonishing seven-under-par 65 – equal to the race record of Karrie Webb that was set two days earlier and her equivalent second best LPGA Tour round.

At that moment in the clubhouse at six o'clock, she was still behind Kaufman five after the American birdied her first hole to reach 11 under. Still, she was visibly excited when she said she was running now to earn a check in the $ 30,000 range, provided there was no other charge.

Since her previous best career prize was (approximately) $ 53,000, earned last year in a LET event in Morocco, this was nothing to sneeze for the 33-year-old who last year could only maintain a very limited LPGA Tour status and had plotted an equally limited schedule in 2019.

But when the leaders began to falter and Kemp left the course to celebrate with a silent cider together with her friends, she began to climb the rankings – and switch to water.

For a while she was in charge in the lead until the eventual champion Celine Boutier birdied the 15th hole to restore the two-stroke buffer she had held on the belt.

But her share in second place, and the (approximately) $ 109,000 check that she would collect as a result, was more than she could have ever dreamed of.

Kemp had since May 2015, when T16 on the ShopRite LPGA Classic still no top-20 finished on the LPGA Tour, and considered the very real possibility to this year less than a handful of events to play.

"It is unbelievable, it was a crazy day," said Kemp.

"I pulled my tee from the first and shot a double-bogey … but I pulled it very nicely together and just stayed patient.

"I do not think I made a birdie until the fourth (but) I came to that point where I could not remember how many Birdies I had made … but it just came together.

"It was one of those days when I almost did not know what happened, it all happened so fast and everything went according to plan, so I just tried to stay patient and I knew I had a good score at the end and was a little nervous by the 18th, but everything worked well. "

Her series of five birdies in succession from the fourth turned back to red figures, but it was the last four of the last nine that could re-shape her season and career after only four cuts in her 19 previous LPGA Tour events.

"I'm still on cloud nine and it will probably change my year," Kemp said.

"This week was a big week for my LPGA status, so to finish it is pretty big.

"With my status at the LPGA this year, I did not go to Q-school last year and I should have done that, but I took the guess and with the current status that I have, these two weeks with the Australian Open next week were a bit like a Q-school for me, so to finish this, my year will change drastically.

"It's hard to say right now, but I'm going to get a lot more LPGA events, for this week I might have looked at three, but this could turn into 13-15, I'm not sure, so it depends on what it happens next week (in Adelaide).

"But it certainly changed my year, so I will have to look at a different schedule than I planned, which is a big problem."