After an overnight soaking led to a three-hour delay to start the opening round on Thursday, Sanchez carded a 7-under-par 64 as the winds dropped and light faded on the Remarkables course, holing his last putt at 8.26pm.
Young Kiwi amateur Yuki Miya, at 6-under-par with five holes left to play when his first 18 resumes tomorrow morning, is his nearest challenger.
A group of three players at 5-under-par includes Wade Ormsby (Aus) and Kevin Na (US) who fired 66s, and the highest-ranked New Zealander in the field, Daniel Hillier, who will have 23 holes on his schedule on day two.
Sanchez’s round was bogey-free and included a run of three birdies in four holes to start his second nine.
“I was just really happy to get it done, get the round in,” the winner of Webex Players Series South Australia last October said.
“This (event) is right up there, so to do it here, it’s really special, but I know it’s a quarter of the way down. It doesn’t really mean a whole lot.”
Ormsby, whose last tournament was as a fill-in player at LIV Adelaide, could rightly claim to have produced the best round of Thursday. His 66 came on the Coronet course which played considerably the more difficult of the two, providing just 10 of the top 29 scores on the end-of-day leaderboard.
A winner of five titles on the Asian Tour, including the Hong Kong Open twice, the South Australian is still searching for a victory on his home tour.
“I’ve never won on the Aussie tour and that’s something that I’ve always wanted to try and do,” Ormsby said.
“It’s nice to put myself towards the pointy end early in the week.”
Ormsby’s round started in the heaviest shower of the morning, with the temperature barely above 10 degrees, and the blustery southerly wind making conditions feel even colder. He admitted the opening six holes were a real struggle.
“I was just trying to put in damage control at the start and played a pretty good golf towards the end there,” he said.
After leaving LIV Golf, Na has come to Queenstown to start a new chapter of his 24-year professional career and he negotiated today’s round without a bogey.
“I haven’t played competition golf in three months or so, maybe longer, but I feel like there’s a good energy, there’s a positive energy and I’m happy.” he said.
“Mind is fresh and I feel like I have a chance to enjoy golf more.”
That carefree attitude was tested on the par-5 first hole, Na’s 10th for the day, when he miss-hit a driver off the fairway with his second shot, his ball careening into his amateur partner’s about 100 metres ahead.
“I kind of hit it thin and it was one of those low runners, but it would’ve gone 230-240 no problem, and it hits my partner’s ball and I lost about good 80 yards,” he lamented.
“I managed to hit a really good shot next and make par …. and looked at my partner. I was like ‘I’m glad I made par because I would’ve been pissed if I made bogey’.”
The shot of the day came from New Zealand’s Kazuma Kobori who used a 4-iron to hole out on the 210m fourth hole of the Remarkables course, his second ace of the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia season, following on from a one on the Party Hole at the BMW Australian PGA Championship.
“It was kind of unexpected to get (another) one so soon,” Kobori said after finishing on 4-under-par 67.
“You don’t really expect to hole it on that hole, especially with 4-iron in hand in these conditions.
The DP World Tour member was in a share of the lead at 5-under-par when he came to his final hole, but he found the hazard on the par-3 ninth hole on the Remarkables, leading to only his second bogey for the day.
The next best New Zealander to complete his round was Kobori’s playing partner, 54-year-old Steven Alker, who shot a 3-under-par 69, impressing his much younger opponent.
“Stevie played really nicely. It was nice to play with him because he plays the game in a similar way that I do,” Kobori said.
“So it was good to play with him and then kind of bounce off of each other.”
Almost half of the 156-man field wasn’t able to complete the opening round today and will resume at 7.40am on Friday.
