{"id":21818,"date":"2025-10-31T06:49:53","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T06:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tom-mckibbin-ni-golfer-hits-course-record-to-lead-hong-kong-open\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T06:49:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T06:49:53","slug":"tom-mckibbin-ni-golfer-hits-course-record-to-lead-hong-kong-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tom-mckibbin-ni-golfer-hits-course-record-to-lead-hong-kong-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom McKibbin: NI golfer hits course record to lead Hong Kong Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve shot 62 maybe four times before but this was definitely my lowest and I think it might be very hard to beat,&#8221; said McKibbin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He began with a birdie on the second hole, then carded an eagle on the third, before further birdies at the eighth, 10th 12th and 13th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Belfast-born McKibbin, who made the switch to LIV Golf for the 2025 season, then started a run of three consecutive birdies on the 15th and finished bogey-free at 10 under par to lead Thailand&#8217;s Jazz Janewattananond &#8211; who carded 61 &#8211; by a shot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fellow NI golfer Graeme McDowell is 87th after a disappointing one-under-par 69.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The winner of the event will qualify for the 2026 Masters, while the highest-placed non-exempt player who makes the cut will earn a place in the field for the 154th Open at Royal Birkdale in July. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/golf\/articles\/cy7epyn34k5o?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve shot 62 maybe four times before but this was definitely my lowest and I think it might be very hard to beat,&#8221; said McKibbin. He began with a birdie on the second hole, then carded an eagle on the third, before further birdies at the eighth, 10th 12th and 13th. Belfast-born McKibbin, who made [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21820,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21818\/revisions\/21820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}