{"id":330726,"date":"2025-12-06T03:28:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/330726\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T03:28:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T03:28:17","slug":"australian-open-daniel-hillier-ryan-fox-in-contention-at-royal-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/330726\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open: Daniel Hillier, Ryan Fox in contention at Royal Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI was pretty flat for the most of it. Didn\u2019t feel great for the best part of maybe 12, 13 holes of that round,\u201d Hillier said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThen, I don\u2019t know, I came around the turn. There were a few more people out, a few more people getting behind me and that gave me a bit more energy down the stretch and I was able to finish off with a few birdies, which was nice.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">He sat level with fellow Kiwi Ryan Fox as the top Kiwis in the field in a tie for seventh, with Fox dropping a few spots on the leaderboard after an even-par 71 in his second round. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">Portugal\u2019s Daniel Rodrigues and Denmark\u2019s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen held the clubhouse lead at nine-under-par. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">Rodrigues climbed 11 places on the leaderboard with a seven-under round, which was the best score of the day, while Neergaard-Petersen backed up his four-under first round with a five-under second. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">Current world No 2 Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, bounced back after a one-over first round with a three-under second to move under par for the tournament. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">A birdie on his last hole of the day saw McIlroy move to two-under at the halfway point to make the cut and climb more than 20 spots up the leaderboard. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">Kiwi Tyler Hodge was in the same boat as McIlroy, also backing up a one-over first round with a three-under second round. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\">New Zealand duo Nick Voke (-1) and Kerry Mountcastle (par) also made it through to the weekend, while Kazuma Kobori (+3), Jimmy Zheng (+3) and Josh Geary (+8) were among those to miss the cut.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ehSvJlTQHTuOTYQ\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/christopher-reive\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Christopher Reive<\/a> joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI was pretty flat for the most of it. Didn\u2019t feel great for the best part of maybe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[1929,64,63,81,94718,177006,788,41261,2650,1953,38940,161514,304,4717,16371,8835,32482,647,16804,38930,15139,85,747,4849],"class_list":["post-330726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-at","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian","tag-birdies","tag-contention","tag-daniel","tag-five","tag-four","tag-fox","tag-golfer","tag-hillier","tag-holes","tag-in","tag-into","tag-kiwi","tag-last","tag-melbourne","tag-open","tag-royal","tag-ryan","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-working"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330726","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=330726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}