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Canterbury golfer Cooper Moore is looking to continue a memorable year by becoming the first Kiwi to win the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship, hosted on home soil at Te Arai Links South Course north of Auckland.
Moore, a student at St Bede’s College, has this year finished second at the NZ PGA Championship and played in the St Andrews Links Trophy, The Amateur Championship and the US Junior Amateur Championships, where he made the semi-finals.
The 18-year-old also represented New Zealand at the Nomura Cup in China and then played in the Junior Presidents Cup in the lead-up to the main event at Medinah Country Club.
“Playing Junior Presidents Cup was a huge highlight and something I wanted to do for about the last two years and obviously to get in that team was pretty special,” he told the NZ Herald.
“For me that experience was more than just my tournament golf, to spend two days with the likes of Ryan Fox, Scottie Scheffler, that was pretty special.
Moore is joined by fellow Cantabrians Zackary Swanwick, Yuki Miya and Zach May at the championship which started on Thursday. He was in position T3 on the 2026 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship leaderboard on Friday.
“We know that there’s a good chance of one of us winning,” Moore told the Herald.
“It’d be a pretty cool thing to do if no Kiwis ever won it and to do it in our own backyard would be pretty special.”
Moore is ranked No 225 in the world amateur golf rankings and aims to crack the top 100 before aiming to turn professional.
“[I’m] not in too big of a rush at the moment, just keep working on the amateur stuff and try to get inside top 100 in the world and really push on from there to look to go pro after that,” he told the Herald.
- The Asia Pacific Amateur Championship winner earns an invitation to the 2027 Masters Tournament and an exemption into The 155th Open Championship.