{"id":944220,"date":"2026-10-28T18:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T18:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/944220\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T18:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T18:08:12","slug":"golf-masters-and-open-places-up-for-grabs-as-asia-pacific-amateur-starts-at-te-arai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/944220\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf: Masters and Open places up for grabs as Asia-Pacific Amateur starts at Te Arai"},"content":{"rendered":"

The top amateur golfers from the region will be chasing invitations to major tournaments when the Men’s Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship starts at the Te Arai Links course north of Auckland on Thursday.<\/p>\n

An invitation to the Masters at Augusta National and a place in The Open at St Andrews are up for grabs for the tournament winner.<\/p>\n

Nine New Zealanders are in the field led by Zack Swanwick of Hawke’s Bay, Joshua Bai of Auckland and Cooper Moore of Canterbury.<\/p>\n

Swanwick is a junior at the University of Florida who has recorded three top-10 college finishes in 2025-26 and represented the International Team at the 2026 Arnold Palmer Cup.<\/p>\n

The field is made up of 120 players from 40 nations across the region.<\/p>\n

Australian Harry Takis is the highest-ranked player in the field at number 21 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking with Swanwick ranked just behind him at 23.<\/p>\n

Thai Fifa Laopakdee is aiming to become only the second player to win the title in consecutive years, following Hideki Matsuyama’s back-to-back victories in 2010 and 2011.<\/p>\n

Te Arai Links’ South Course is on the east coast 100km north of Auckland and was designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and opened in 2022.<\/p>\n

It measures 6259 metres and is also home to Ryan Fox, New Zealand’s reigning Open champion<\/a>, who holds the course record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The top amateur golfers from the region will be chasing invitations to major tournaments when the Men’s Asia-Pacific…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-944220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944220","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=944220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}