Local hero Daniel Hillier has become just the second Kiwi golfer in 23 years to win the $A1.69 million New Zealand Open with a two-stroke triumph over Lucas Herbert.<\/p>\n
But there was also a significant silver lining for the second-placed Australian as he grabbed a spot in the 2026 British Open at Royal Birkdale.<\/p>\n
DP World Tour star Hillier started the final day with a one-shot lead over countryman Kerry Mountcastle and Australian Curtis Luck and was never \u00a0headed.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old had five birdies and just the one bogey in a hugely-impressive final round of four-under 67 to top the leaderboard at 22 under on a cold day with intermittent rain at MiIlbrook Resort.<\/p>\n
Since Mahal Pearce’s win way back in 2003, the only other Kiwi golfer to lift the NZ Open trophy aloft was Michael Hendry in 2017.<\/p>\n
As Hillier was already locked in for the British Open, the spot for the highest-finishing non-exempt player went to LIV Tour player Herbert.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old has teed it up in 17 majors – with a best finish of a tie for 13th at the 2022 US PGA – but has only qualified for two of the last eight.<\/p>\n
Herbert shot a rock-solid 67 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It completed an impressive comeback in a tournament which he started ignominiously by dropping three shots in his first three holes in dreadful conditions back on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Japan’s Tomoya Ikemura (67) and Mountcastle (71) tied for third at 17 under, while Australian Travis Smyth finished strongly with a 68 to improve to outright fifth at 16 under.<\/p>\n
Luck’s title bid unravelled at the par-4 sixth hole on Sunday when he lost his ball after hitting his tee shot way right and then had to settle for a double bogey.<\/p>\n
The West Australian limped home with a final round of eight-over 79 to slip all the way down the leaderboard to a tie for 23rd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Local hero Daniel Hillier has become just the second Kiwi golfer in 23 years to win the $A1.69…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-511355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511355","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=511355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}