October 8, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cIt was pretty crazy,\u201d the 28-year-old from Wellington said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, I toed it quite a bit. Wasn\u2019t too happy with the strike. I was telling it to go the whole way, but it kind of hung in the air for a little bit longer than I thought. And then, yeah, heard some cheers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillier said he didn\u2019t immediately know he had made the ace as his ball pitched pin-high and took one hop to the left before rolling in.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, you can\u2019t see the bottom of the hole from the tee, so I saw everyone jump up at the back of the grandstand there,\u201d he said. \u201cA little bit of disbelief for a while, but it\u2019s nice to see it go in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillier, who won his national open in March just days after getting married, said he thought it was his fifth career hole-in-one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe year just keeps getting better,\u201d he said. \u201cHopefully, I can continue that for another couple of months.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BMW was available only to the first player who made a hole-in-one on the hole this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t realise a car was on offer,\u201d Hillier said. \u201cI\u2019ve locked it up pretty early, but absolutely stoked and very grateful. It\u2019s going to be a long drive though to New Zealand, I know that much!\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant Forrest, Connor Syme and Eugenio Chacarra shared the lead after opening rounds of five-under 66, with Sergio Garcia among those one shot back in his home Open.<\/p>\n
Jason Scrivener led the three-strong Australian contingent with a one-under 70 that left him tied for 21st, with David Micheluzzi shooting a 73 and Elvis Smylie 74.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Photo: Chris Symes\/AAP PHOTOS] New Zealand champ Daniel Hillier has holed-in-one at the Spanish Open in Madrid. Daniel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,136842,2057,755,405163,85],"class_list":["post-921531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-hillier","tag-europe","tag-golf","tag-overseas-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921531","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=921531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}