Calum Hill equalled the Royal Club’s course record with an 11-under-par 61 to take a four-shot lead in the Bahrain Championship at the halfway stage.<\/p>\n
The Scotsman made 11 birdies to match the course’s lowest score – set by Brandon Robinson Thompson in the first round of the 2025 tournament – to seize the lead on 16 under.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old, seeking his third DP World Tour title, has a comfortable cushion over first-round leader Freddy Schott after the German added a 67 to his opening 65.<\/p>\n
Schott is on 12 under, three clear of Frenchman Ugo Coussaud, with a group of 11 players on eight under – including former Masters champion Sergio Garcia.<\/p>\n
“I started off really well then had a few bonus putts from really long range go in and I just kept making birdies,” said Hill after the lowest competitive round of his career.<\/p>\n
“I knew the course record was 11 under, so I knew I needed to hole my last shot [to break it] and it looked very good in the air. I thought it had a chance.”<\/p>\n
The Fife golfer opened with a birdie then picked up three shots in a row from the fourth to draw level with Schott.<\/p>\n
Hill got to 11 under with further birdies at the ninth and 10th, and picked up shots at the 13th and 14th following outstanding approach shots.<\/p>\n
He made a par at 15 but ended his round with three consecutive birdies and has a handsome lead as a result of dropped shots by Schott at the 15th and 18th.<\/p>\n
Coussaud finished birdie-birdie to move into third on his own at nine under while Patrick Reed, champion in Dubai last week, is on six under.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calum Hill equalled the Royal Club’s course record with an 11-under-par 61 to take a four-shot lead in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-399186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}