Rising Danish star Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen has locked into the sandbelt mindset, taking advantage of benign morning conditions at Royal Melbourne to claim a share of the lead midway through the second round of the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
Fresh off a successful first full year on the DP World Tour, Neergaard-Petersen picked up four shots in three holes early in his second round on Friday and added two further birdies coming home to sign for a five-under 66.<\/p>\n
It left him at nine under, tied with Portugal’s Daniel Rodrigues, who birdied eight of his last 12 holes in a sizzling round of seven-under 64.<\/p>\n
Mexican Carlos Ortiz (70) was in outright third at seven under.<\/p>\n
Overnight co-leader Elvis Smylie, tournament headliner Rory McIlroy and leading Australians Adam Scott, Min Woo Lee and Cameron Smith all had afternoon tee times on Friday.<\/p>\n
They will be chasing the 26-year-old Neergaard-Petersen, who has gained valuable sandbelt experience after playing several times at nearby Peninsula-Kingswood in recent times with his good mate and DP World Tour colleague David Micheluzzi.<\/p>\n
“It makes a difference, certainly knowing what to expect,” said the Dane.<\/p>\n
“The eagle I made today, it’s one of those shots you’re never normally thinking about.<\/p>\n
“I had a six-iron and you’re landing it five steps short of the green. But that’s some of the shots you’ve got to hit here.<\/p>\n
“It’s kind of getting into that sandbelt mindset, which I think definitely helped.”<\/p>\n
Neergaard-Petersen got his tournament going with a strong finish to the opening round and carried that momentum into Friday.<\/p>\n
“I hit a lot of really good golf shots, gave myself a lot of chances and was able to convert some of them,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So two really good days work and looking forward to the weekend.”<\/p>\n
Overnight co-leader Ryan Fox, who won twice on the PGA Tour in an outstanding 2025 campaign, was in the group tied for fourth at six under.<\/p>\n
The highlight of the New Zealander’s level-par round of 71 on Friday was an eagle at the par-5 14th.<\/p>\n
“After yesterday it was always going to be hard to back up a round like that,” Fox said.<\/p>\n
“Obviously it’s a lot easier today but I just felt like I had one of those days where I was always in between clubs and that’s not great out here.<\/p>\n
“They had the pins a little tougher today than they did yesterday and it just felt like I couldn’t get close to the hole and I didn’t putt as well as yesterday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rising Danish star Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen has locked into the sandbelt mindset, taking advantage of benign morning conditions at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-328663","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\/328663","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=328663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}