Isagawa, Kang to square off in final match

Defending champion Nicole Sakamoto disappeared, Mid-Pacific junior Lisa Kang appeared prominently and Cassy Isagawa and Kacie Komoto wouldn’t go away on the second day of the State Women’s Match Play Championship.

Isagawa, a sophomore at Oregon, needed a gutsy par putt and one decisive birdie putt — among many other shots — to finally take out Komoto on the 24th hole of their semifinal Thursday at Oahu Country Club. She will play Kang, a 5-and-4 winner over Anna Jang, in this morning’s championship.

Jang ousted Sakamoto 3 and 2 in a morning quarterfinal. Sakamoto, who just graduated from James Madison, had won the past five Hawaii women’s majors she played, including the last two match and stroke play championships.

Jang is about to start her senior year at Princeton. Last semester, the 2007 state high school champion studied in Africa and did not touch a club.

Last year, at 15, the 5-foot-1 Kang tried her first match play championship and lost in the first round. This time she stuck around, defeating Brittany Fan in the morning quarterfinals and winning the first four holes against Jang after opening with two birdies.

"She’s consistent," Jang said, "and she bounces back really well."

She had to when Jang cut her deficit in half by the time they made the turn. Kang birdied the 10th, won the next hole with par and dormeyed the match when Jang ran into tree trouble at No. 13.

"You just try to play your game, not lose your mental focus," Kang said of match play, simplifying what Komoto and Isagawa now know is a very complicated form of golf. "Once you’re like 1 down you try to do something different and you start losing and losing, keep going down. Just think positive."

Just behind the Kang-Jang match, the Cassy-Kacie match was taking all kinds of weird turns, severely testing their mental focus.

Both were state high school champions — Isagawa won in 2010 for Baldwin and Komoto this May — and both somehow found a way to overcome their emotions over five frantic hours.

Isagawa led this semifinal 4-up at the turn. Komoto, a Punahou senior and OCC member, won the 11th and 12th with pars and the 13th with a birdie as Isagawa ran into trouble at the quirky course.

"I was playing well and then I hit a spot where I just couldn’t make anything," Isagawa said. "And she was coming back, that’s the way it goes in match play.

"Good players have a strong mental game and fight back."

She rallied with birdie on the next hole to go back 2-up, then launched two drives out of bounds and conceded the 15th.

Isagawa never blinked and, after Komoto bogeyed the next hole to dormey the match, she wouldn’t blink either.

"I couldn’t even tell if she was upset, tired, excited," Isagawa said. "Lately I’ve been able to shake things off a lot better than when I was younger. She does a really good job of it. It really gets me going if I can tell my opponent’s emotions, but she could not even give me a second to realize ‘is she tired, do I have a chance?’ She did great."

Isagawa nearly drove the 17th green but it was Komoto who got up and down for par to cut her deficit to one. When she two-putted for par from 40 feet on the treacherous 18th green, they went to overtime.

Isagawa had two putts to win in regulation. Komoto had one on each of the first four extra holes.

Isagawa salvaged the par-3 fourth when she got up and down from the bunker, sinking an 8-foot par putt.

"I thought ‘just make one before you leave,’ " she recalled.

She missed another putt to win on the next hole, but finally ended it by getting a three-foot birdie putt to slide in at No. 6.