Chinese Taipei’s Lin Soars at Royal Melbourne

Melbourne, Australia: Lin Chuan-tai fired an accomplished four-under-par 67 to soar into a share of the half-way lead at the 14th Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC).

Drawing on past Royal Melbourne Golf Club experiences, the University of Washington senior defied swirling winds and firm greens to raise hopes of becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the region’s premier amateur title.

“It was definitely a good day of business,” said Lin, who was part of the International Team at the Junior Presidents Cup here in 2019.

With a 36-hole total of three-under 139, Lin will head into Saturday’s third round level at the top of the leaderboard with China’s Ding Wenyi, who added a 70 to his opening 69.

They are two shots clear of four players – New Zealanders Kazuma Kobori, the first-round leader, and Jimmy Zheng, Indonesian Randy Bintang and Australian Billy Dowling.

So challenging were conditions that the half-way cut for the leading 60 players came at 12-over-par 154.

Among the high-profile players to miss out was Japan’s Yuta Sugiura. The highest-ranked player in the field at 16th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), Sugiura failed to make a single birdie as he carded rounds of 79 and 76, a final-hole bogey sealing his fate.

Beginning the week in 70th place in the WAGR, Lin made the most of his morning start, snaring six birdies against two bogeys to post the best round of the day.

“I started by hitting a lot of good shots. Sometimes putts dropped, sometimes they didn’t. I just tried to hang in there,” said Lin, a star of the Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation team that defeated the European Golf Association in August’s Ryder Cup-style match play Bonallack Trophy in Spain.

“This course is so hard. Playing here in the Junior Presidents Cup certainly helped me to understand the course a little better,” added Lin, who will not allow himself to think too far ahead, or about the rewards that will go to the winner on Sunday – starts in the Masters Tournament and Open Championship in 2024.

“I’ll just be trying to keep everything the same. At the weekend there is more pressure, but if you can focus on the small things well, the results are going to come. If it doesn’t, you just learn from it and move on to the next event.”

Like Lin, Ding focused on keeping any high numbers off his card and has the distinction of being the only player in the field to have bettered par on both days.

Winner of the US Amateur Junior Championship last year, Ding is 17th in the WAGR, the highest-ranked China player in the standings.

Kobori, the leading individual at last week’s World Amateur Team Championships in Abu Dhabi, was unable to recapture the magic of his first-round bogey-free 66 here, tying the amateur course record.

However, despite four bogeys in a five-hole stretch from the seventh, Kobori signed for a hard-earned 75 that keeps him very much in contention heading into the weekend.

Joining Lin over the weekend are fellow Bonallack Trophy team members Sampson Zheng Yunghe of China (145), New Zealand’s Mako Thompson (147), Vietnam’s Nguyen Anh Minh (150), New Zealand’s Joshua Bai (151) and Australian Jack Buchanan (154).