Teenager Cooper Moore amongst NZPGA leaders
Cooper Moore in action today – image Australian Golf Media
From Queenstown in New Zealand’s south to the east coast of the north island, the PGA Tour of Australasia is playing its third to last event on its schedule at the Bridge Pa Golf Club in Hastings where the Wallace Developments New Zealand PGA Championship has reached the halfway stage.
Four golfers are tied in the lead through 36 holes, including 16-year-old Cantabrian Cooper Moore, fellow New Zealanders Chang Gi Lee and Tyler Hodge and Queenslander Anthony Quayle.
That group is one shot ahead of Sydney’s Austin Bautista but with 15 players within four shots of the lead, the weekend promises to be yet another shootout following on from last Sunday’s final-round rush for contention at the New Zealand Open.
Moore is threatening to repeat the brilliant performance of then 17-year-old Kazuma Kobori at the 2019 New Zealand PGA Championship in Christchurch, the teenager having finished runner-up just two weeks ago behind Mike Hendry at a domestic event near Hamilton.
Moore, not 17 until mid-June, is the current New Zealand Amateur Champion and last October finished as the leading Australasian at the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship just a few months after finishing runner-up at the R&A’s Junior Open Championship.
After missing the cut at last week’s New Zealand Open when under a deal of expectation, Moore has bounced back with a second round of 66 today, setting the scene for an intriguing battle over the final two rounds.
Anthony Quayle is currently in 7th place on the Order of Merit and if he was able to find a way to win the closing three events of the year he could well earn one of the DP World Tour cards available to the leading three players at season’s end in late March. Much will also be dependant on who takes up a card.
Last week’s New Zealand Open winner, Ryan Peake, missed the cut by two.
