\u201cJust made some really good swings and putter got hot, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tournament winner receives US$1.53m ($2.72m) while a victory could rocket Kobori into contention for a top 10 spot on the DP World Cup which would earn a PGA Tour card.<\/p>\n
Fellow Kiwi Daniel Hillier is two shots back in a share of 13th after shooting a 66.<\/p>\n
Lowry and Fleetwood, both previous winners of the event, were drawn in a group that also included a third Ryder Cup player, Rasmus Hojgaard.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nice,\u201d said Lowry. \u201cI was pretty excited when I saw the group, my pairing today, and it was nice to go out there with the boys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fleetwood carded eight birdies and no bogeys, while Lowry fired nine birdies and dropped a single shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething about me and Tommy,\u201d the Irishman added. \u201cI just like playing with him, your friend, and really good player too.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you kind of feed off each other. It was nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fleetwood agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so close to both the guys, Ryder Cup teammates, played with Rasmus, who I\u2019m close with last week. It was great,\u201d the Englishman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou focus on your own game,\u201d he added. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t make that much difference but definitely when you\u2019re in a comfortable pairing or group it\u2019s nice. It\u2019s helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dane Hojgaard ended the round in a chasing pack of seven, one shot off the lead.<\/p>\n
Another Ryder Cup player, Ludvig Aberg, made a hole-in-one on the par-three eighth and finished the day two shots back.<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy opened with a four-under 68 to sit in a share of 27th.<\/p>\n
– With AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cJust made some really good swings and putter got hot, as well.\u201d The tournament winner receives US$1.53m ($2.72m)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85448,18239,85449,85451,46612,18831,194,18832,7240,85452,1362,111,139,69,2122,180,213,4497,12825,85450,196,102,377],"class_list":{"0":"post-121746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-abu","9":"tag-championship","10":"tag-dhabi","11":"tag-fleetwood-and-shane","12":"tag-golfer","13":"tag-kazuma","14":"tag-kiwi","15":"tag-kobori","16":"tag-lead","17":"tag-lowry","18":"tag-made","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-share","23":"tag-shares","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-start","26":"tag-stunning","27":"tag-tommy","28":"tag-tours","29":"tag-with","30":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}