Zack Swanwick - third overall and age group winner in Australia in 2022 - was this year the champion and is now a top-10 golfer in the Australian Open. Photo / NZME
US-bound teenaged Hawke’s Bay golf prodigy Zack Swanwick has again blasted his way into the conversations of the golfing world by hitting an opening round of 67 in the Australian Open at the Lakes Golf Club in Sydney.
Swanwick, 17, the dual New Zealand and Australia junior amateur
champion who led his Taradale High School team to Hawke’s Bay’s first-ever New Zealand schools title earlier this year, was four off the lead and tied for eighth place at the end of the Australian tournament’s opening day on Thursday.
His win in the Australian junior amateur championship exempted him into the Australian Open, and he responded from the start with three birdies and an eagle on the par-five eighth hole, rounding off with a two for a front-nine 30 – the best of the day. Heading into the less viable inward nine, he started with the first of two bogeys, but has put himself in the box seat for a place in the cut of 60 for the third and fourth rounds at the weekend.
Australian professional Cam Davis, a 28-year-old US-based player who won the title in 2017 and who in 2012 scored his first PGA Tour win, hit seven birdies and an eagle in a nine-under 63 to take the lead going into the second day, a shot ahead of US tour player Patrick Rodgers and Scotland’s Connor Syme.
Swanwick last month officially signed with new champion US campus the University of Florida, where he starts in July.
