Maja Stark of Sweden during the second round – Lalla Meryem Cup – Royal Golf Dar Es Salam (Blue Course), Rabat, Morocco. Credit: Tristan Jones/LET

Denouement at the end of the third rounds, this Saturday in Morocco!
What if, before talking about the two great leaders after two rounds, Stephen Ames et maja stark, on track today in Rabat to respectively win the 47th Hassan II Trophy, event of the American PGA Tour Champions, and the 26th Lalla Meryem Cup, the second stage of the Ladies European Tour season, we would like to give a little tip of the hat to two very young players?

The first is Moroccan and is called Sofia Cherif Essahali. She is still an amateur. She passed the cut after two rounds taking the provisional 53rd place with a total of +7, which will make her the only player from Morocco to be present alongside the two most famous golfers in the country, Maha
Haddioui et Ines Laklalech, in the third final round this Saturday in Rabat. What an experience for what represents his first tournament with the "big guys" of the LET. A small detail: Sofia is 13 years old!

The second, Nastasia Nadaud, is French. She is only 18 years old (since last November 23) and was still an amateur on August 26, 2022 when she won the Gothenburg Ladies Open, a LETAS tournament, the second European division, with four strokes ahead of the first proette, a
Swedish. At the end of the year, she earned her full playing rights for this 2023 LET season. And there that passes the cut like a flower in Rabat, 29th at +4 after two laps. A small detail: Nastasia is not only French, she is Savoyard, from Aix-les-Bains!

Contract already well fulfilled, therefore, for Sofia and Nastasia. And without that excluding a record card, like this 65 that Nastasia Nadaud had signed during the first round of the French Open 2022 in Deauville. For the first places, of course, the path is too long. And that goes for the four other French women who passed the cut: Agathe Sauzon et Anne-Charlotte Mora (46th at +6), as well asEmma Grechi et Charlotte Liautier (tails 60 ths at +8). Note that only the young amateur Sara Brentchenef (+15) will stop there…

After the first two rounds, it's the Swede maja stark, European number 2 in 2022, which took off with a provisional total of – 8 (71 Thursday and 67 this Friday). Needless to say that the permanent match between her and her compatriot Linn Maria Grant, the winner of the circuit last year, will
be grand. Grant is “only” 4th at -3 in the attack of the third final round. But on a course like the Bleu de Dar Es Salaam as it has been densified, anything can happen. With Linnea Strom, 3rd provisional at -4, Sweden therefore leaves this Saturday with three players in the first four provisional!

Aditi Ashok of India during the second round – Lalla Meryem Cup, Royal Golf Dar Es Salam (Blue Course), Rabat, Morocco. Credit: Tristan Jones/LET

Probably nothing to worry about the Indian Aditi Ashok, 2nd at -6, and which is therefore damn surrounded by the blue and yellow aramada before the outcome of this 26th Lalla Meryem Cup. At 24, the player from Bangalore is undoubtedly the most experienced of all, she who turned pro in 2016 when she was only 17, who played on the LPGA Tour, which was 4th at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 and has four LET wins to date, the most recent of which…last week at the Magical Kenya Ladies Open !

Stephen Ames leads the Hassan II Trophy after two laps.

As for the senior men and the Hassan II Trophy, the Canadian Stephen Ames, absolute leader at -9, showed the same "zenitude" as Aditi Ashok, in recent days in Rabat. With reason. Tant, after two laps leading, he broke away from his followers: the Australian Mark Hensby and English Paul broadhurst, 2nd tied at -6, as well as the Swede Robert Karlson and l'American Brett Quigley, 4th tied at -4. But nothing is played on the Red course of Dar Es Salam where the greens redesigned in 2018 by James Duncan seem to be able to annoy the minds of players from one day to the next. Three, four, even six moves ahead (on Jeff Sluman, 6th at -3), this is a good margin for Stephen Ames. But the statistics dear to the world of golf have re-opened before its third final round this Saturday in Rabat...

Of the six times he has led the first round of a senior PGA tournament, the Vancouver man has only converted that position into victory once, at the Principal Charity Classic. And in 2020, during the Morocco Champions in Marrakech, the first edition of the Champions Tour on Moroccan soil, where he
was already the leader of the first two rounds, he had been stolen the first
spot by Brett Quigley. Revenge in Rabat for Ames? Inshallah…

Nathalie Vion.

See the Lalla Meryem Cup leaderboard  here

See the Hassan II Trophy leaderboard here

Read the previous article Lalla Meryem Cup here

Read previous Hassan II Trophy articles here