Staff WriterThe BMW Australian PGA Championship delivered a proper Friday shake-up, and Kazuma Kobori was the one rattling the field. The New Zealander birdied the final four holes of his second round to set the clubhouse target before fading light forced officials to halt play on a day that felt like a sun-splashed sprint at Royal Queensland.
Kobori, still buzzing from a rookie DP World Tour season that ended with a seat at the Tour Championship, stitched together nine birdies and just a single blemish on the way to a ruthless eight-under 63. That moved him to ten-under for the tournament, a number that looked sturdy enough to survive the restart but far from untouchable in this BMW Australian PGA Championship free-for-all.
Hot on his heels are Anthony Quayle, Brett Rankin, and China’s Wenyi Ding — all lodged at nine-under and looking like men who believe the weekend owes them something. With the Queensland breeze nudging shots but never bullying them, it was a day where the scoring pencil needed sharpening. Only Sebastian Garcia, the first-round leader, drifted backwards among the top 30 with an over-par second round he’ll want to forget.
Kobori, who casually logged a hole-in-one during Thursday’s 69, wasted little time proving that wasn’t a fluke. Birdies at the second and third steadied the rhythm; gains at the eighth and ninth set the tempo. A fifth at the 12th made his card look downright indecent, and when he bogeyed the 14th for the second straight day, the snap-hook that caused it lit a fuse rather than a meltdown.
He closed like a man who’d been offended by the idea of stopping. Four straight birdies, each one kissed home by a putter running hotter than a Brisbane pavement.
As he put it: “I struck the ball really well coming in after I snap-hooked one down the trees on 14. I don’t know, something must have clicked and then started flagging it and then…I was putting well all day, so yeah, rolled a couple in and that was that.”
He wasn’t done. “It was nothing crazy. I flagged it on 15, holed a four-footer, stumped it on the next hole, a five, six-footer, and then stumped it on the next hole, a five-footer again. And then on the last, like a nine, ten-footer. I’m not really good at finding out how long those putts are. I just feel it out. But yeah, no, it was good to hit it good. And then finish on a high.”
And in classic Kobori understatement: “Yesterday was a bit frustrating. I had a hole-in-one but didn’t do much a part from that but I made up for that today which was good.”
There’s no swagger, just a young player hungry for the grind. “I’m just trying to get a little bit better at golf every day. Whether I play on the Aussie Tour, or if I play back in New Zealand, the DP World Tour or on the PGA TOUR, play Majors, I’m just trying to get a little bit better at golf. I feel like today I learned a little bit about my game today and then I’ll use that moving forward.”
Behind him, 2023 champion Min Woo Lee lurks at eight-under alongside Christopher Wood, Ricardo Gouveia and France’s Tom Vaillant — a group with enough firepower to make the weekend feel like a street fight.
Round two will pick up at 6:00 am local time tomorrow, with round three rolling out in a two-tee U-draw from 7:30 am. The leaderboard is tight, the scoring is low, and the Queensland sun isn’t going anywhere.
Expect movement. Expect mistakes. Expect brilliance. And count on Kobori — he’s clearly not done.
