On February 6, the sixth day of the Chinese New Year, Li Haotong and Lin Xiyu scored 63 strokes on the same Sunday, relaying the "China Red" of the DP Tour and the LPGA.
Today, 77 days later, the stunning double sound of "Left Lin Right Li" was staged again, and Li Haotong and Lin Xiyu, who were both 26 years old, were on the same Sunday, and they invariably created the "peak moment" of Chinese golf!
9 birds! Li Haotong baoka great leap forward
In the Half Field Championship staged in Catalonia, Spain, Li Haotong only ranked tied for 60th place after two rounds, and the "pressure line" skimmed the promotion line. However, with the arrival of Mobile Day, the European Tour has ushered in a new chapter of "Haotongzhi".
In the third round, which was stopped by rain, Li Haotong seized the opportunity to start early and not only successfully finished the race on Saturday, but also caught 7 birds on the last 8 holes, including a "6 birds in a row" shockwave on the 6 holes in the final 6 holes - this is the first time since Li Haotong turned professional in 2011 that he has caught birds in a 6 consecutive holes in an official competition!
However, Li Haotong's most recent "5 consecutive birds" was created by us aforementioned on the sixth day of the Chinese New Year, when he scored a 63 in the final round of the Ras Al Khaimah Championship. In addition, he also flew 5 consecutive birdies from the 16th hole to the 2nd hole in the second round of the Volvo China Open held in the middle of Shenzhen in 2019.
The feat of 6 consecutive birds made Li Haotong jump to 52nd place in an instant and rise to 6th - on the day of the finals, his firepower was still undiminished, and he cut three birds on three holes - the European Tour caught birds on 9 consecutive holes! This is not good, and it instantly triggered a sensation of high fans around the world. Some overseas netizens even compared the Chinese star with the PGA Tour New Orleans team leader Canterly/Sheophile combination, saying that the latter's strong firepower of 18 holes, 1 eagle and 10 birds could not be compared with Li Haotong's 11 holes and 10 birds.
Foreign netizens are also excited about Li Haotong
Not only that, Li Haotong also slammed the ball on the green on the 13th hole of 321 yards in the final round, almost staging an albatross into the hole! The wonderful shot not only made the official commentator of the European Tour highly praised, but even won the applause of the first group of players on the green. After the match, the wonderful eagle shot by Li Haotong in this hole was also rated as the best ball of the day in the final round by the DP Tour - and the magical scene of "four hole shooting eagles" was already the second time this week that Li Haotong played out this week after the 3rd hole of the mobile day - such a strong scoring ability, among the 156 European Tour players in the Hantian Championship, is unique!
Unfortunately, 3 bogeys on the final day prevented him from rising further in the rankings, and in the end, he finished in a separate 6th place. This is the second time this season that Li Haotong has finished in the top ten of the DP Tour after tied for 3rd at the Ras Al Khaimah Championship in February. However, it is also his second european tour top ten since 23 August 2020, eight months in a year.
Li Haotong's four-par hole is almost an albatross
Due to visa problems and too low picks, Li Haotong missed all four previous DP Tour matches, the Half Field Championship, and only his fifth Appearance on the European Tour this year. However, a beautiful 6th place not only made up for the loss of the schedule, but also exchanged him for a large prize money of 64537.41 euros (about 453,000 yuan), as well as 4.8 world ranking points, and the world ranking soared 42 places to 268th, setting a new year's ranking high.
More importantly, Li Haotong gained 96.7 valuable Dubai competition points in this campaign, and has accumulated 305.4 total points in just 5 games, and the season ranking has risen to 41st.
According to the DP Tour Charter, the top 110 in the standings at the end of the season will receive membership for the next season – what we commonly call "card". However, after deducting some players who have the "dual membership" of the PGA Tour and have too few participants, the "life and death line" of the card will be taken to about 120th place. Last year, 121st-place Scot David Dresdale saved his card with a 380.5 points .5. This year, due to the increase in the number of DP Tour matches, the card line is expected to be around 400 points.
Today, Li Haotong has broken through the 300-point threshold and is only about 90 points away from the card – which means that as long as he wins another top 6, or can guarantee promotion in the next 26 games, he can successfully retain his European Tour membership.
Li Haotong's 2022 is worth looking forward to
Of course, baoka is certainly not Li Haotong's only goal. With his fiery touch this weekend, we have every reason to have greater expectations for the 2022 season of "Hao Tongzhi"!
Lin Xiyu, the queen of one-shot holes
Just an hour after Li Haotong finished handing over the card, the west coast of the Atlantic ocean changed to the west coast of the Pacific Ocean, and Lin Xiyu also staged a magical moment in the LPGA arena.
In the final round of the Los Angeles Open, guangzhou girls dug up the pole with 56 degrees on the 7th hole, drew a precise parabola, and directly hit the flagpole on the green 94 yards away, and entered the hole!
Chinese number one women's golfer Lin Xiyu
Hole-in-One, Lin Xiyu staged her 5th hole in the LPGA! And that's just a year after her last HIO.
In fact, if you count the era of national team training in the early stage of career change, and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games that set a precedent in women's golf history, 26-year-old Lin Xiyu, in her career, has exploded 7 HIOs - the title of "Queen of One Hole", which is well deserved!
"I had a similar yardage last year for that one-shot hole, so when I came to this hole, I wondered if I still had a chance." Lin Xiyu replied after the game, "But what surprised me the most was that this ball actually hit the flagpole, you know, I hit the flagpole ball before, and there was never a good result." ”
This time the sound of the small ball hitting the bar was so loud that Lin Xiyu and her teammates were looking at the direction outside the green, wondering if the ball had bounced into the water or in the bunker... It wasn't until the fans, especially the audience in the house behind the green, began to clap their hands and cheer that Lin Xiyu felt that this time the situation was a little different.
"I was just thinking, what about the ball? Where did it go again? I had no idea it would go into the hole. Until a long time passed, until I saw the ball in the hole, I couldn't believe it, was it true? It finally didn't fly this time. ”
Similar to Li Haotong, Lin Xiyu also rested for a period of time before returning to participate, and also suffered a bad start, and even the same "pressure line" to advance to the finals. 'I struggled a bit around the green this week, but I got to the final and that's the positive side.' Lin Xiyu said, "When I entered today, I said to myself: 'Jenny (Lin Xiyu's English name), you should play a round of negative shots, you haven't done it this week.' “
As a result, on Sunday, Lin Xiyu flew out 1 eagle and 5 birds, and hit the lowest 66 in the game. "I'm very happy that the final result was able to come to the negative score." "The state of the stadium in California is very different from where I practiced in Orlando, and I'm slowly getting used to it this week and the results now are a very positive sign for me to play next week," she said. ”
Of course, the Chinese players who performed well this Sunday are not just "left lin right Lee". Also at the Los Angeles Open, Liu Yu finished tied for 10th place, ranking among the top 10 of the LPGA for the first time after a gap of 685 days! Yin Ruoning, a 19-year-old youngster who has just started his journey abroad, successfully broke through the LPGA event with a promotion line for the first time and finished 33rd, winning his best result on the women's PGA Tour.
The collective outbreak gives us reason to expect that Chinese golfers will present more and more magical moments on overseas tours!
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