Lee, who took a two-shot lead into the final round, fired a four-under par 68 for a 16-under par total of 272.

A three-putt bogey at 17 had dropped her into a tie for the lead with Kim, who had capped her 67 with a tap-in birdie at the last for a 15-under total of 273.

At Travis Pointe’s par-five 18th, Lee’s second shot landed just right of the green. She chipped to within three feet and drained the putt for her fourth LPGA victory and her first since 2016.

“I’ve been playing pretty solid the whole year,” said Lee, whose five prior top-10 finishes in 2018 included a playoff loss to Lydia Ko in San Francisco in April.

“It’s nice to have a win before the Open,” added Lee, already looking ahead to the US Women’s Open that starts Thursday in Shoal Creek in Alabama.

“Next week is going to be a totally different week, so I’ll just try my best. I know I’m hitting it pretty solid, I’m putting solid, so hopefully I’ll have a good week.”

Lee had maintained her two-shot lead through the first nine holes, picking up birdies at three of her first five holes as she produced a string of straight drives and precision iron shots.

Kim, one-under for the day through nine, gained steam with four birdies in five holes from the 10th through the 14th.

She was 14-under after a bogey at 15 but put the pressure on Lee with her closing birdie, settling for solo second one stroke in front of Thailand’s Moriya Jutanugarn who carded a seven-under 65.

Australian Su Oh carded a 68 and American Lindy Duncan a 69 to share fourth on 275.

Stacy Lewis, who is expecting her first child in November, started the day with a share of second but settled for a one-under 71 that left her equal seventh on 277 alongside Ariya Jutanugarn and Danielle Kang.

The Latvian served 13 double faults and made 48 unforced errors in an error-strewn display as she slumped to a shock 7-5, 6-3 loss to little-known Ukrainian Kateryna Kozlova on Philippe Chatrier Court.

The 20-year-old’s performance was the total opposite of the scintillating attacking tennis that took her to the title 12 months ago.

“I think it was a terrible day at the office today for me,” Ostapenko said.

“I mean, in general I played maybe like 20 percent of what I can play. Made like 50 unforced errors and so many double faults. Like couldn’t serve today.

“Everything together just brought me a really bad result.”

The fifth seed is only the sixth woman in the Open era to lose in the first round of a Grand Slam tournament as defending champion, after Steffi Graf at Wimbledon in 1994, Jennifer Capriati (2003 Australian Open), Anastasia Myskina (2005 French Open), Svetlana Kuznetsova (2005 US Open) and Angelique Kerber (2017 US Open).

Ostapenko said that she was hampered by a leg injury suffered during her quarter-final defeat by Maria Sharapova in Rome last week, and by a personal matter earlier on Sunday.

“It’s more personal, but, just in general… Just woke up, you’re like, your mood was not amazing, you just woke up and kind of some things went wrong, and then you are kind of pissed off, in the practice you’re pissed off,” she said.

“And then you go to the match and try to be positive, but everything goes not your way, and you still try to be positive, but then you lose the match and of course you cannot be positive anymore.”

The French Open is the only Grand Slam event that begins on a Sunday, and Ostapenko felt that a later start would have helped her regain full fitness in time.

“I think if I was scheduled on Tuesday, I think Monday or Tuesday, at least one extra day would help me a lot, but unfortunately yesterday I didn’t feel that I was in a great form.”

– The opponent ‘didn’t matter’ –

Kozlova 

It was a third defeat in as many meetings with world number 66 Kozlova for Ostapenko, after previous losses at S-Hertogenbosch in 2016 and at an ITF event in Italy two years before.

But she insisted that her form was so poor that she would have lost no matter who she played.

“Any player who could hit like five shots back I think probably could beat me today because I didn’t really play well and didn’t really matter who was on the other side, because she was just waiting for me to miss,” bemoaned the Latvian.

For Kozlova, this was the biggest win of her career, coming over two months since she feared she might need knee surgery after suffering an injury in Indian Wells qualifying in March.

She only returned to the court earlier this week in Nuremberg, and also needed medical attention after struggling with blisters on Sunday.

“Sometimes I have some blisters on the foot and I have this problem. And, yeah, it was ugly and disturbing me a lot,” said Kozlova.

“But after medical time-out, yeah, the physio did a good tape. It helped me to survive.”

Kozlova next faces either former world number one Victoria Azarenka or Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic for a place in the last 32.

It was their 10th in a biennial tournament they won in 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990 and between 2004 – 2012 (biennial) before Japan, and then Denmark, deposed them in 2014 and 2016.

Japan drew first blood when Kento Momota stamped his authority over Rio Olympic Games gold medalist and 2014-15 world champion Chen Long 21-9 21-18, his second win over the world No 4 after beating him in the Asian Championships in Wuhan, China, last month.

World Championships men’s doubles winners and world no 3 pairing Liu Cheng and Zhang Nan put China back on track as they easily picked off Takuto Inoue and Yuki Kaneko 21-10 21-18.

China took the lead when 2018 All England winner Shi Yuqi, the world No 3, survived a late fightback from the 14th-ranked Kento Nishimoto to win 21-12 21-17.

Then two-time Asian Championships winners Li Junhui and Liu Yuchen clinched the overall victory, saving two match points at 20-19 down to beat Keigo Sonoda and Yuta Watanabe 17-21 21-19 22-20 in a thrilling battle that lasted 70 minutes.

With the victory, the fifth rubber between former world No 1 and Olympic gold medalist Lin Dan and Kanta Tsuneyama was cancelled.

Japan will still return home with some pride after the women’s side beat Thailand 3-0 for their sixth Uber Cup win on Saturday.