Maybank Championship 2026: Yamashita Back to Leads by Two

Defending champion Miyu Yamashita leads the Maybank Championship by two shots at 13-under par after the second round at Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club. The Japanese star’s 131 total is five shots better than her 36-hole score when she won this event in 2025. Thailand’s 17-year-old amateur Marisa Tojai jumped 36 places to share 11th with a bogey-free 65.

Yamashita added a bogey-free 66 to her opening 65 for a two-round total of 131. She hit 12 of 14 fairways and 17 of 18 greens in regulation and took 29 putts. She was tied for fourth after 36 holes last year, then won in a playoff over Hannah Green and Hye-Jin Choi at 18-under.

She is chasing her third win of the season, after the Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give and the CPKC Women’s Open. She has also finished in the top ten in four straight tournaments.

Tojai was the story of the day. She made seven birdies in a bogey-free seven-under 65, behind only Carlota Ciganda of Spain (63) and South Korea’s A Lim Kim (64) for the day’s lowest scores. The round lifted her to a tie for 11th.

At 17, Tojai is the youngest player in the field and the leading Thai, the leading amateur and the leading ASEAN Qualifier. She earned her place by finishing fourth at two-under (71-71) at the ASEAN Qualifier at KLGCC in August. This season she has won the ANNIKA Invitational Asia by 12 shots and the Makassar Amateur by 13 shots.

Liyana Durisic is the leading Malaysian in the field, having earned her invitation through the ASEAN Qualifier. She plays the second stage of LPGA Q-Series next week in Florida. Mirabel Ting carded a four-under 68 to climb 24 places to tied 46th. Natasha Oon is tied 60th at one-over, Kelly Tan is tied 65th at two-over and Genevieve Ling is 75th at six-over.

Spain’s Julia Lopez Ramirez made eight birdies and one double bogey and leads the field with 15 birdies through 36 holes. She was tied for 11th in her last start, at the BMW Ladies Championship, and was solo 75th on her debut at this event last year. She represented Team Europe on the Solheim Cup team that won in 2026.

France’s Pauline Roussin-Bouchard has not made a bogey or worse in the tournament, and she converted all three of her sand-save chances in round two. It is her lowest 36-hole score on the LPGA Tour. Her previous best was 135 at the 2023 Walmart NW Arkansas Championship. She was tied 60th here in 2025 after an 80 in the second round.

Brooke Matthews of the United States made a hole-in-one in the second round, using a 9-iron from 130 yards.

Yamashita is fourth in the Race to CME Globe and fourth in the Rolex Rankings. She has two wins and 12 top tens in 2026, with USD 2.8 million in official earnings. She tied the 36-hole, 54-hole and 72-hole LPGA Tour scoring records at the CPKC Women’s Open and finished tied fourth at the Amundi Evian Championship, her best major finish of the year. In her career she has four LPGA wins, 24 top tens and USD 6.3 million in earnings.

She joined the LPGA Tour in 2025 and won that year’s AIG Women’s Open for her first major and the Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award. She was fourth for Japan at the Paris 2024 Olympics, and she has 13 wins on the JLPGA, including three majors.

Yamashita closed with a 68 to win by two shots on 22-under 266, ahead of China’s Yan Liu at 20-under. In her first LPGA event, Tojai tied Roussin-Bouchard for third at 19-under, three shots behind the winner. She shot 72-65-65-67 for a total of 269. Yamashita took the $450,000 winner’s share of the $3 million purse.

Credit Photo : Maybank