{"id":870299,"date":"2026-10-04T08:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T08:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/870299\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T08:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T08:52:17","slug":"byus-kihei-akina-climbs-the-leaderboard-on-moving-day-at-the-pgas-bank-of-utah-championship-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/870299\/","title":{"rendered":"BYU\u2019s Kihei Akina climbs the leaderboard on moving day at the PGA\u2019s Bank of Utah Championship \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">BYU\u2019s Kihei Akina fired an impressive 6-under-par 65 in Saturday\u2019s third round of the Bank of Utah Championship at Black Desert Resort Golf Course in Ivins to move up 19 places. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Cougar sophomore heads into Sunday\u2019s final round at 14-under par, nine strokes off leader Austin Smotherman, who is 23-under.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Smotherman holds a one-shot lead over Doug Ghim heading into Sunday\u2019s final round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Akina, tied with former BYU and PGA veteran Patrick Fishburn of Ogden at 8-under on Friday in making the cut, made birdies on 3,5, 6 and 7 (his back nine) Saturday to card his third round under par (67-67-65) in this PGA event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Akina entered the clubhouse tied for 16th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Zac Blair, another BYU veteran on Tour, had a run of his own Saturday. Blair, who lives in Orem, made birdies on 4,6 and 7 (his back nine) to go to 12-under par for the tournament and 6-under on the day like Akina. He previously made birdies on his front holes at 14,17 and 18. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He was T26 in the clubhouse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Fishburn shot 2-under par 69 on Saturday to get to 10-under, good for T45. Only those three players from Utah made the cut. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Akina\u2019s power was on display on the long Par 5 No. 17 when he drove the ball off the tee 345 yards and then hit his second shot 299 yards to just outside 12 feet from the hole.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">From there, he missed his eagle but had an easy tap-in birdie to get to 6-under for the day. His other birdies came on 14 and 18 in a round without a bogey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BYU\u2019s Kihei Akina fired an impressive 6-under-par 65 in Saturday\u2019s third round of the Bank of Utah Championship&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[40544,427,99],"class_list":["post-870299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-byu-cougars","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870299","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=870299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}