Telfer's Thoughts

Kazuma Kobori, the 22-year-old rookie pro from New Zealand, enjoyed his best week on the DP World Tour when he fired a final round of 63 and shot up the leaderboard by 14 places to finish alone in 3rd place at the BMW Championship in Munich this week. That final round of 63 included 9 birdies and an eagle.

The Kiwi pro now sits in 44 th place on the DP World Tour rankings. At year’s end only the top 70 golfers from this Tour are eligible to play in the rich Race to Dubai end-of-season championship. Kobori now has an excellent chance of being in that top 70. Sure, there is a lot of golf to be played between now and November, but the consistency of Kobori‘s overall game suggests he’s a good bet to be in that top 70.

So far on tour Kobori hasn’t ranked anywhere near the top 100 in distance off the tee, but in Germany he made some big strides here, averaging 299 yards (around 275 metres) which ranked him 56th longest driver in Munich. He remains however the second most accurate driver on the DP World Tour. He lived up to that ranking in Germany, hitting 85% of fairways, while the field’s average was in the low 40’s. He has also fattened his wallet considerably in Germany lifting his season earnings to E373,000 or just over NZ$700,000.

Daniel Hillier, the other Kiwi in the field, didn’t fare quite as well as Kobori - he missed the cut.

Our top golfing duo, Ryan Fox and Lydia Ko, both had the week off. Foxy travelled to Britain for the first of two tournaments, the Scottish Open this week which forms part of the USPGA Tour, followed by the Open Championship at Port Rush in Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile on the LIV Golf circuit, Kiwi pro Ben Campbell picked up a cool US$225,000 for finishing in a tie for 21st place in the latest LIV Golf tournament in Dallas, which was won by Patrick Reed who picked up US$4 million - just staggering numbers.

However, feelings between LIV Golfers and USPGA players still run deep if an outburst from former Major Championship winner Lucas Glover is anything to go by. In a golf podcast aired in the USA last week, Glover said he is firmly opposed to any LIV Golfers being allowed to rejoin the USPGA circuit as has been suggested in some quarters as a means to resolve the standoff between the two tours. Glover couldn’t have been more emphatic in his opposition, saying he doesn’t want those players back. “Personally,” he says, “I don’t want to play with them... or see them back here taking part of my pie”.

I suspect he is far from alone with those feelings in the ranks of USPGA players. Clearly animosity still exists between the two tours as various spokespeople from the two bodies continue to try and thrash out a compromise deal that would see the two tours unite in some fashion. It looks a bit like the stand-off between Israel and Hamas. Interestingly enough, Donald Trump has got involved with this golf dispute but appears to be having about as much success there as he is trying to bring about peace in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.