{"id":346917,"date":"2025-12-14T06:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T06:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346917\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T06:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T06:13:08","slug":"golf-higa-makes-history-as-first-japanese-to-win-asian-tour-order-of-merit-the-mighty-790-kfgo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346917\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf-Higa makes history as first Japanese to win Asian Tour Order of Merit | The Mighty 790 KFGO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dec 14 (Reuters) \u2013 Kazuki Higa became the first Japanese golfer to win the Asian Tour\u2019s Order of Merit \u200don Saturday after finishing seventh at the season-ending Saudi Open.<\/p>\n<p>Higa, 30, carded a four-under-par 68 in the final round at Dirab Golf and Country Club, closing on \u200c16-under, seven behind Sweden\u2019s Bjorn \u200cHellgren, the tournament winner.<\/p>\n<p>His performance secured him the top spot in the Asian Tour standings, ahead of Zimbabwe\u2019s Scott Vincent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am so, \u200bso happy. This is a great honour. I just love playing golf. \u200dThat\u2019s what it\u2019s about. \u200bI can\u2019t wait to get \u200bhome to see my family,\u201d Higa said.<\/p>\n<p>Higa\u2019s \u200dascent up the rankings gained momentum with back-to-back wins at September\u2019s Shinhan Donghae Open in South Korea and Yeangder TPC in Taiwan, followed by a \u200drunner-up finish at the International Series Philippines in October.<\/p>\n<p>For his achievement, Higa also earned an \u200dexemption to \u200dthe British Open.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have worked \u200bvery hard for this. I \u200bfelt \u2060that last year changed things, \u200call the hard work started to pay off and it\u2019s amazing to see it all pay off this week,\u201d Higa said.<\/p>\n<p>(Reporting by Suramya Kaushik in Bengaluru; Editing by \u2060William Mallard)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec 14 (Reuters) \u2013 Kazuki Higa became the first Japanese golfer to win the Asian Tour\u2019s Order of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-346917","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\/346917","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=346917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}