Telfer's Thoughts 20.10.25

When Kiwi Golfer Daniel Hillier stood on the first tee at the Delhi Golf Club on Sunday afternoon NZ time, he, in all probability, was in a very positive frame of mind. He had strung together 3 sub-par rounds at this US$4 million India Championship event and he was just 4 shots behind the tournament leader and right among the big names in this world class tournament.

Quietly he must have felt confident that at last, after 6 months and 14 tournaments without a top 10 finish, he could break that drought this day.

And so he did. A 3 under par 69 got him into a share of 9 th place and a cheque for NZ$147,000.

Two and half hours earlier though the 27-year-old Kiwi, believe it or not, was sitting at the top of the leaderboard, having played some utterly sublime golf on this final day.

He had catapulted up the leaderboard from 11th place to 1st and now had a 1-shot lead over arguably the best golfer in the world over the past few months, Englishman Tommy Fleetwood.

Daniel had posted no less than 7 birdies in his first 10 holes on this last day. It was flawless golf with not a dropped shot in sight. It was probably the best 10-hole streak he had ever had in his 7-year professional career.

Three holes later on the short, innocuous par 5 14th which measured only 455 metres, Hillier, from the middle of the fairway and only 200 metres from the pin, inexplicably pushed his second shot, a mid-iron, into a thick grove of trees. Even though he found his ball it was unplayable, so back down the fairway he went to play now his 4th shot which he put into the middle of the green. His mind by now was probably a mixture of despair and confusion. The result was a 3-putt green for a double bogey 7. He bogeyed the next hole as well and then another bogey on the 18th as despair took hold, seeing him drop a total of 4 shots over the last 5 holes.

Sport, as we all know, can be cruel and traumatic and these twin miscreants can and often do come calling right when a sportsman or woman thinks they are at the absolute apogee of their code.

How Daniel Hillier copes with this horrible adversity will tell us much about his inner self and his future prospects. I’m sure from what I’ve seen of Daniel over the years, he’ll survive this setback and get into the winners’ circle again. He has as good a technical game as anyone on the DP World Tour.

Needless to say, Fleetwood, off the back of Hillier’s misfortunes, promptly grabbed the outright lead midway through that back 9 and never relinquished it to record his 8 th DP World Tour victory and elevate himself into the top 5 of the Official World Golf Rankings.

And I’d be very surprised if Fleetwood, one of the genuine nice guys of world golf, didn’t have a quiet world with Daniel after the tournament concluded. Fleetwood, more than probably any other top pro, knows only too well what it’s like to see your game collapse over the final few holes of a big tournament when you have the lead. This fate has happened to Tommy numerous times during his years on the USPGA Tour before he finally broke his drought this year winning the rich FedEx Cup final a month or so ago.