Laopakdee was an early starter, which produced the lower scores in round one. The Thai player started with a bogey at his first hole, the 10th, before recording three birdies and moved to 10-under but lost his way with four bogeys and a birdie to start the front nine, eventually carding a one-over 72.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s looking to emulate 2021 Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama, who is the only player to defend his Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship title.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a grind out there for me. Had a great front nine, shoot two\u2011under par, then back nine, just didn\u2019t make any putts. Got two three\u2011putts and then coming down the stretch had a great chance of birdies but I just missed all of them,\u201c Laopakdee said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut if you ask me like just all week, I would take seven\u2011under for the first two rounds, I would take it, definitely, and I think I\u2019m in good position for the weekend.” <\/p>\n
Moore was even through 15 with two birdies and two bogeys but a long-distance birdie at 16 with a crafty eagle putt off the bank at the 18th green led to a finishing birdie and a one-under 70.<\/p>\n
Xie had an eagle at the third to go with two birdies and four bogeys.<\/p>\n
Ryan Xie of New Zealand plays a stroke from a waste area on the No 7 hole during the second round of the 2026 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship at the Te Arai Links South Course. Photo \/ AAC<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is unreal. There was some moments I thought it would be called off. Balls were rolling non-stop but very happy with how I handled it today. Quite proud of my ball striking today. I never really missed a shot out there. Kept it in play, which you need to do around here. Playing in the afternoon all you can do is try and survive. So I\u2019m glad to get even par today,\u201d Xie said.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s Taishi Moto produced the highlight of the day with an ace at the eighth hole \u2013 on his way to an even-par 71, which leaves him in a share of sixth at one-under.<\/p>\n
Kiwi Joshua Bai sat in second at the start of the day on five-under but slipped down the leaderboard with a seven-over 78, his only birdie coming at the 18th.<\/p>\n
Top-ranked Kiwi Swanwick, who like Bai plays at University of Florida, was the best of the day with a four-under 67. A strong bounceback after being four-over the card midway through his opening round yesterday.<\/p>\n
Swanwick was one of just five players to post a red number today (including Moore and fellow Kiwi Zach May), two shots better than anyone else.<\/p>\n
\u201cFairways and greens are really valuable out there. Just kind of stuck to our game plan and have fun along the way and had a few putts roll in on back nine, which helps,\u201d Swanwick said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just freed myself. It\u2019s pretty easy to overthink a few shots out here with wind and more break. I just freed up and picked a target and it went in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laopakdee was an early starter, which produced the lower scores in round one. The Thai player started with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7125,9526,62037,71154,1975,40647,18239,9436,5162,803,35089,1888,109,106,296,194,807,13840,2442,6093,1362,60,111,43,139,69,8808,8466,37451,18835,8229,6027,10000],"class_list":["post-645663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-amateur","tag-another","tag-arai","tag-asiapacific","tag-at","tag-blustery","tag-championship","tag-chase","tag-chasing","tag-continue","tag-cooper","tag-first","tag-ground","tag-head","tag-into","tag-kiwi","tag-kiwis","tag-like","tag-links","tag-little","tag-made","tag-moore","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-running","tag-second","tag-sitting","tag-strong","tag-they","tag-win","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645663","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=645663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}