{"id":32968,"date":"2024-04-26T20:02:24","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T10:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/?p=32968"},"modified":"2024-04-26T20:04:36","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T10:34:36","slug":"day-1-kozuma-shoots-63-to-lead-torque-tops-team-leaderboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/2024\/04\/day-1-kozuma-shoots-63-to-lead-torque-tops-team-leaderboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 1: Kozuma shoots 63 to lead; Torque tops team leaderboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After shooting a bogey-free 9-under 63 to grab the first-round lead at LIV Golf Adelaide, Iron Heads GC\u2019s Jinichiro Kozuma credited his putting prowess with helping him get through \u201csome troubles here and there.\u201d
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\nHis teammate and Friday playing partner Danny Lee, sitting next to Kozuma during the post-round press conference, was perplexed. \u201cTrouble? What trouble?\u201d
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\nIndeed, the 29-year-old Kozuma seemed to have almost no trouble during the first round at The Grange Golf Club. He was 8 under after his first 11 holes and never gave up the lead on a day of low scoring before enthusiastic jam-packed crowds at The Grange.
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\nKozuma will take a one-shot advantage into Saturday\u2019s second round over Lee and Torque GC\u2019s Carlos Ortiz. Four players are tied for fourth, two shots back \u2013 Mito Pereira (Torque), Peter Uihlein (RangeGoats GC), Andy Ogletree (HyFlyers GC) and Anirban Lahiri (Crushers GC).
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\nTorque GC owns the team lead by shooting 20 under, the lowest first-round counting score by any team this year. Besides the contributions from Ortiz and Pereira, captain Joaquin Niemann\u00a0\u2013\u00a0who leads the Individual Championship standings this season thanks to two individual wins \u2013 contributed a 67.
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\nThe Iron Heads are one shot back in second, while HyFlyers GC is third at 17 under. Crushers GC, which leads the season-long team race, is in fourth at 16 under. The hometown favorites Ripper GC, captained by Cameron Smith, are fifth at 15 under.<\/p>\n

After shooting a bogey-free 9-under 63 to grab the first-round lead at LIV Golf Adelaide, Iron Heads GC\u2019s Jinichiro Kozuma credited his putting prowess with helping him get through \u201csome troubles here and there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ortiz and Pereira also excelled together in the all-Torque group.
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\n\u201cIt was really nice playing with these guys,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cThey holed out two holes in a row, so it felt like we were getting some momentum our way. Really happy the way I played, and just get it going.\u201d
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\nKozuma, Lee, Pereira and Ogletree are among eight individual players who have yet to produce points (top 24 finish) through the first five tournaments this season. That they posted strong opening rounds at Adelaide is an indication that better results may be on the horizon.
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\n\u201cNot the start [to this season] that I would like,\u201d said Pereira, who finished eighth in the season-long standings last year. \u201c\u2026 But trying to work hard to get my game back where it was last year, or even better.\u201d
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\nFor Kozuma and Lee, the focus for the next two rounds is not on points but just playing well and building on the momentum of Friday\u2019s hot start.
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\n\u201cYou can’t get too caught up in that kind of stuff,\u201d said Lee, who was slowed by offseason surgery on his wrist. \u201cI feel like that’s only putting a lot of pressure on yourself, so you’ve just got to let it go and keep your head down and just keep doing what we’ve been doing.\u201d
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\nAdded Kozuma: \u201cI don’t want to think too much about the points. I want to just enjoy where I’m at right now and play.\u201d<\/p>\n

LIV Golf website<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After shooting a bogey-free 9-under 63 to grab the first-round lead at LIV Golf Adelaide, Iron Heads GC\u2019s Jinichiro Kozuma credited his putting prowess with helping him get through \u201csome troubles here and there.\u201d Read More \u00bb<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4187,"featured_media":32970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[59,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guests-news","category-liv-golf"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32968"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32971,"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32968\/revisions\/32971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grangegolf.com.au\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}