Cass Alexander followed up her brilliant, pace-setting, eight-under-par 64 in the first round of Wriston Ladies Open in Chinese Taipei with a one-under 71 on Friday to put her on 135 at the halfmark of this co-sanctioned event which forms part of the Ladies European Tour (LET).

This dropped the 27-year-old South African from first place on the leaderboard into a tie for fourth, three strokes behind Korea's Cheng-Hsuan Shih who leads on 12-under-par 132.

But Alexander, of course, is still in the hunt and importantly still leads the 2026 LET Order of Merit by a long way. And with the season close to its end, she has a great chance of being crowned No 1 which, considering the tour is very much a worldwide tour, would be no mean achievement.

With 2965.48 Order of Merit points in the bag already, her closest challengers are Anna Huang of Canada (1685.70) and Australia's Kelsey Bennett (1600,50) - so some distance behind her.

A little background on Cass, born Casandra Hall. Her dad died when she wasn’t even three and when her brother moved out of the home. "It was always just me and my mom, Charmaine. They say single parents are super heroes and she definitely has been a super hero. I had to help out with the cooking and responsibilities of running a home but this wasn’t a bad thing because it taught me to be independent.

“I can’t emphasize this enough, but I loved sport, every sport, not only golf, ever since I was little. I actually think I was a better hockey player than golfer.” At age-group level, amazingly, she represented Eastern Gauteng and South Africa in five different sports - golf, hockey, badminton, netball and athletics.

Now with two LET victories in 2026 (including the Irish Open, when she carded a course record 62, and the Italian Open) and no less than five runner-up finishes across the world, she's switched from scoring plenty of goals to scoring plenty of birdies.

SHIH LEADS

Cheng-Hsuan Shih holds the lead at the 36-hole mark of the 2026 Wistron Ladies Open after back-to-back rounds of 66 (-6) at Sunrise Golf and Country Club.

The Chinese Taipei star, who won the inaugural edition of the Wistron Ladies Open in 2020, sat in second place after the first round.

P.K. Kongkraphan equalled the course record of 63 (-9) on the second day of action to sit in solo second place on 11-under-par.

The Thai star, who has 14 wins on the TLPGA since 2022, had 10 birdies on her scorecard with only one dropped shot.