{"id":24128,"date":"2025-07-20T16:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/24128\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T16:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:21:08","slug":"li-hoatong-who-is-the-chinese-golfer-challenging-scottie-scheffler-for-the-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/24128\/","title":{"rendered":"Li Hoatong: Who is the Chinese golfer challenging Scottie Scheffler for The Open?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">To make his Open performance even more remarkable, Li said he restricted a lot of his practice to the range due to the size of the crowds in Portrush. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you what, the last couple weeks, I felt really, really bad to be honest,&#8221; Li admitted. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This week I hardly got on the course to play because I felt like there were so many people, with course being so packed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I just kind of hit a few balls on the range and wasn&#8217;t comfortable. Even on our Thursday and Friday morning sessions, I wasn&#8217;t. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But until today, it was actually quite nice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It&#8217;s a feeling he will have to get used to. Unlike at the 2020 PGA Championship, when he led after 36 holes but fell away, he has stayed in touch in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And now, for the first time in his career he will head out on the closing day of a major in the final pairing. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">All eyes will be on him, but it&#8217;s a challenge he plans to embrace as he looks to shock Scheffler. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m actually quite looking forward to it,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ll just try to play my best out there and hopefully make something happen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be exciting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As the underdog against the sport&#8217;s heavy hitters, Li admits he has nothing to lose. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But as he said on Friday: &#8220;I think if I play my best, I can compete with anyone.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To make his Open performance even more remarkable, Li said he restricted a lot of his practice to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-24128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}