Somi Lee plays her 2nd shot at 2nd hole during the second round of the Honda LPGA Thailand 2026 at Siam Country Club on February 20, 2026 in Chon Buri, Thailand. (Photo by Thananuwat Srirasant/Getty Images)
There’s a version of this Friday that writes itself. Jeeno Thitikul, the world No. 1, playing at Siam Country Club on her 23rd birthday, her home crowd singing to her every time a birdie putt dropped. Seven birdies. An eagle. Bogey-free through 36 holes. The galleries packed so tight around the fairways you could feel the heat radiating off them even before Thailand’s morning sun turned the air index past 100 degrees.
That version is a perfectly good story. It’s just not the whole one.
Because while Jeeno gave this tournament exactly what it needed — a Thai icon in full flight, playing the best golf of her career at the Honda LPGA Thailand, three shots off the lead with two rounds to play — a South Korean named Somi Lee was doing something that had never been done before at Siam Country Club. And a cast of players with compelling reasons to be here — a second-year Japanese player chasing her twin sister’s ghost, a 17-year-old making her professional debut, a new mother seven weeks removed from a maternity ward, a veteran swinging through a right shoulder that isn’t fully healed — were staking their own claims on a leaderboard that got crowded and fascinating all at once.
Friday at the 2026 Honda LPGA Thailand Round 2 didn’t belong to just one person. It belonged to all of them.
Somi Lee Honda LPGA Thailand Round 2 Recap: A Record, a 61, and a Woman Who Doesn’t Look at Leaderboards
The 15th hole at Siam Country Club is a par-4. Somi Lee made a two on it.
That’s the eagle, and she’ll walk you through exactly what she was thinking: tee shot aimed through the gap between the tree and the bunker, then a downhill putt she just wanted to die into the hole. Simple. Deliberate. Executed. When the ball stopped at the bottom of the cup she had nine birdies and that eagle, zero bogeys, and a round of 11-under 61 that now lives in the tournament’s record books — tied with Akie Iwai’s 2025 performance for the lowest single round in the event’s history, and the lowest 36-hole total this tournament has ever seen at 127, seventeen under par.
Her previous career best over 18 holes was a 64. She improved on that by three shots.
“I had the best score of my life today,” she said through a translator afterward, “so I’m a little emotional. But since the competition is not over and there is still two more days left, I just want to celebrate this a little bit.”
That measured joy — celebrating a little bit — tells you something about how Somi Lee operates. She doesn’t look at leaderboards during rounds. She said she tries not to look even after. When you’re comparing yourself to others, she explained, you’re no longer playing your own game. On Friday, her own game involved finding all 14 fairways — every one of them — hitting 16 of 18 greens in regulation, and needing only 25 putts. Those numbers don’t happen by accident. They happen when ball-striking and short-game are synchronized, when the mental machinery is running cleanly, when a player has found something and is wise enough not to overthink it.
Lee is ranked 38th in the world, a five-time winner on the KLPGA, with one LPGA title to her name — the 2025 Dow Championship, won alongside Jin Hee Im. She finished T41 at this event last year. This is not a player who announces herself loudly. But she has three shots and two days, and she arrived at the top of this leaderboard in the most convincing way imaginable.
Jeeno Thitikul Recap: She Turned 23, and the Honda LPGA Thailand Patrons Sang for Every Birdie
There is something the television broadcast tries to capture but never quite can: the sound of a Thai crowd at Siam Country Club when Jeeno Thitikul is playing well and it’s her birthday.
Every birdie putt she rolled in on Friday, they sang to her. Happy birthday — in the stands, through the palm trees, carrying across the humidity to wherever she walked next. She had a lot of birdies, which means she heard a lot of singing. Seven of them, plus an eagle on the par-5 seventh, where the crowd’s reaction reached a different register entirely.
“They’re going to sing just only birdie putts,” she said after her round, grinning. “Just only birdie drops and then they all sing it. Obviously nice to have a lot of birdies today, which is hear a lot of happy birthday. The most time in my life.”
She shot a nine-under 63. She is bogey-free through 36 holes — 36 holes of Siam Country Club without a single dropped shot — which represents the best start she has ever had at the Honda LPGA Thailand. Her previous best 18-hole round here was a 64, recorded three separate times across 2021, 2023, and 2025. Friday’s 63 erases all of those.
What makes Jeeno’s position so dangerous is the clarity with which she’s managing this golf course. She knows Siam Country Club intimately — how to miss, where not to go, which pins invite aggression and which ones don’t. She talked about it plainly: “I think we play together a lot, so we know where to miss, where not to go.” That’s not happy talk. That’s a player who trusts her process deeply enough to be precise about it even when the gallery is several thousand strong and singing her name.
She trails Somi Lee by three shots. Three shots is a morning’s work at a course where 60s are routine currency. Jeeno is exactly where Jeeno should be.
Lydia Ko Recap: The Quiet Contender With Rebuilt Irons
Lydia Ko hadn’t played the Honda LPGA Thailand since 2023. She walked back onto the grounds of Siam Country Club with something specific on her mind: her iron play. Not the big picture. Not the scoreboard. The greens in regulation statistics that, by her own accounting, had become some of the worst of her career over the past couple of years.
Friday, she hit 16 of 18 greens. She carded a 64 — eight under, bogey-free, including an eagle at the 15th where she described threading a tee shot around the front of the green and getting “a member’s bounce, a firm bounce off the downslope” that left her a tap-in for two.
“It’s been a while since I hit 16 greens,” she said afterward, with the particular satisfaction of someone checking off the thing they came to the Honda LPGA Thailand to fix. “The last two days have been nice to see what we have been working on pay off on the course.”
She sits T3 at 13-under, alongside Chizzy Iwai. Ko is also candid about the physical challenge this week presents — she was debating whether Singapore, Malaysia, or Pattaya is hotter, landed somewhere near “minimal differences,” and admitted the fatigue arrives earlier here than anywhere else on tour. She’s carrying an umbrella and ice packs between holes. These are not the details of a player coasting. They’re the details of someone managing a week, session by session, trying to still be standing when Sunday afternoon arrives.
Chizzy Iwai Recap: Her Sister’s Photographs, Her Own Record
Walk the grounds of Siam Country Club this week and you’ll see photographs of Akie Iwai everywhere. The 2025 runner-up’s face is on promotional materials, on signage, in the visual history of a tournament she came within a few shots of winning. For Chizzy Iwai, her twin sister, those images served a specific purpose on Friday.
“I saw so many Akie photo in the golf course,” she said, “so that inspired me.”
It worked. Chizzy — a second-year LPGA Tour player who entered this week with a career-low round of 64 — shot a 10-under 62 on Friday. A new career best, by two shots. She went bogey-free, made 10 birdies, hit 13 of 14 fairways and 17 of 18 greens. Her 26-putt total suggests a putting performance that ranged from solid to quietly excellent on greens that quicken through the afternoon heat.
When told it was a career low, she said: “I can’t believe.” Then she laughed.
It’s worth noting that Chizzy’s goal for the season, before she hit a shot in competition, was to reach the world top 10. She arrived at Siam Country Club with that ambition fully intact. She now sits T3 at 13-under, two rounds away from the kind of result that doesn’t just push you toward a ranking — it announces you.
Her sister Akie is further down the field at -3, the twins occupying very different neighborhoods on the same leaderboard at the same tournament where Akie made her own history last year. Golf families contain multitudes.
Julia Lopez Ramirez Recap: 302 Yards and a T5 to Go With It
The stat sheet from Friday tells a small story buried inside a larger one. Julia Lopez Ramirez’s driving average in Round 2: 302.5 yards. In a field that includes some of the longest hitters in women’s golf, that number stands alone.
The Spanish rookie — who came to the LPGA via Mississippi State — plays golf with the patient logic of someone who understands that distance is only an advantage if you convert it into short irons and short irons into birdies. Her R2 scorecard shows 16 of 18 greens hit in regulation, the same as Somi Lee, achieved from angles that shorter hitters simply don’t have access to. She shot a 65, went bogey-free, and sits T5 at 12-under alongside Hannah Green and Allisen Corpuz.
Hannah Green, who was paired with Lopez Ramirez on Friday, described the experience of watching her from behind with a kind of affectionate exasperation: “I was like 20 to 30 meters behind them all day, first to hit every time, so I felt like I had to walk really quick.” Green added that she might see Lopez Ramirez again in Saturday’s groupings — and sure enough, the Round 3 pairings confirm they’ll share a tee time once more.
Lopez Ramirez is three shots off the lead. She is a rookie. Neither of those facts appear to be bothering her.
Mi Hyang Lee Recap: The Shoulder, the Putter, the 63
Before the round started, Mi Hyang Lee had one primary goal. Not birdies. Not leaderboard position. Pain management.
“My first goal is please just no pain,” she said. “Zero. 18 holes with my shoulder.”
The right shoulder injury isn’t fully healed. It has limited her ability to make a complete swing. She couldn’t do a full swing on Friday, she acknowledged. What she could do — what she did instead — was make putts. Her second goal was scrambling, and her putting was, as she put it with the most efficient possible summation, “so hot.” She missed only two greens in regulation, had 25 putts, and shot a nine-under 63 that lifted her into a T8 tie at 11-under.
A 63 with a compromised shoulder on a course where the heat index touched 100 degrees by mid-morning. Mi Hyang Lee is going to be 34 years old next month. She has been around long enough to know how to get around a golf course when the body isn’t fully cooperating, and Friday was a clinic in that very specific skill.
The Human Element Recap: Dryburgh and Clemente
Gemma Dryburgh
Gemma Dryburgh opened this tournament with a six-under 66 — a statement round from a player returning to competition just seven weeks after giving birth to her son, Leo. On Friday, the Pattaya heat collected its toll: a 73 that slipped her back to T33 at five-under par.
But five-under and still in the field, still competing, still walking 18 holes in conditions Lydia Ko was comparing unfavorably to Singapore and Malaysia, is not a small thing for a woman who was in a maternity ward less than two months ago. The Aberdeen, Scotland native crossed the cut line. She will play the weekend. Whatever Saturday and Sunday bring, she has already demonstrated something that statistics don’t fully capture.
Gianna Clemente
Gianna Clemente is 17 years old. She plays golf as a professional, sponsored by Nike. This week is her LPGA Tour debut. She has shot back-to-back 69s for a 36-hole total of 138, sitting T27 at six-under par.
In a field that includes former world No. 1s, major champions, and players who have been competing at this level since Clemente was in elementary school, she is T27. The scorecard doesn’t register age.
Honda LPGA Thailand Round 3 Tee Times:
The featured groups tee off Saturday morning from Hole 1:
10:32 AM — Somi Lee, Jeeno Thitikul, Chizzy Iwai 10:20 AM — Lydia Ko, Julia Lopez Ramirez, Hannah Green 10:08 AM — Allisen Corpuz, Mi Hyang Lee, Hyo Joo Kim
The top group covers every possible storyline Saturday has to offer: the record-setter trying to hold a three-shot lead, the birthday girl trying to close the gap on home soil, and the second-year player who can’t quite believe what she’s done. They’ll tee off into the same Pattaya heat that’s been baking this leaderboard all week, and the par-5 seventh — where Jeeno’s eagle sent the crowd into something between a chant and a song — will be waiting for all three of them.
Somi Lee has three shots. She has said she won’t look at the leaderboard. Jeeno Thitikul has three shots to make up and 36 holes to do it. Women’s golf has been building toward exactly this kind of Saturday for a while now.
Follow Fairway Queens for continuing 2026 Honda LPGA Thailand coverage through the weekend. Round 3 tee times above are local Thailand time (CT +11 hours).
