Tom McKibbin claimed victory at the Hong Kong Open on Sunday qualify for the Masters for the first time and secure his place for The Open.<\/p>\n
Leading from round one, the 22-year-old Holywood golfer was consistent throughout as he triumphed in the prestigious Asian Tour event at Fanling.<\/p>\n
McKibbin, who plays on the LIV Golf Tour and had a past won on the European Tour in 2023, began his challenge in superb fashion by shooting an official course record 60 on Thursday which set the tone for his week<\/p>\n
Belfast-born McKibbin, who won once on the European Tour in 2023 and now plays on the LIV Golf tour, shot an official course-record 60 on the opening day Thursday to ignite his title charge.<\/p>\n
He maintained his lead going into Sunday’s final round by one shot on MJ Maguire, shooting a final-round 63 to finish on 27 under par in warm and overcast conditions, which included eight birdies with five on the back nine.<\/p>\n
“I dreamt of doing this since I was a young kid, and they come true if you train hard enough,” he said.<\/p>\n
McKibbin is a club-mate of five-time major winner Rory McIlroy, the current Masters champion.<\/p>\n
Peter Uihlein was second at 20 under and his fellow American Maguire was tied for third, another shot back.<\/p>\n
The Hong Kong Open is one of the elevated International Series events on the Asian Tour in 2025, and is bankrolled by the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf.<\/p>\n
It is also one of a select number of national opens around the world that were granted status as qualifiers for next year’s Masters at Augusta and The Open at Royal Birkdale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom McKibbin claimed victory at the Hong Kong Open on Sunday qualify for the Masters for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-257585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}