Zimbabwe’s Kieran Vincent [main picture] overcame the elements to take a share of the clubhouse lead mid-way through day one of the KOLON Korea Open.

He shot a two-under-par 69 along with Koreans Jeunghun Wang and Dongmin Lee at Woo Jeong Hills Country Club, when rain and cold weather combined with a tough course set up to make par a good score.

They lead from Australian Jed Morgan, Thailand’s Gunn Charoenkul and Suteepat Prateeptienchai plus Koreans Changgi Lee, Hanmil Jung, and Kyungnam Kang.

“I think obviously the rain and the weather always creates a little bit of interesting factors, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really change a whole lot, you know,” said Vincent.

“You still got to hit a good shot, you still got to pick a target and trying to hit it as best as you can, and I think today what worked well was I just gave myself a bit of freedom to make some errors. There were going to be errors made, and instead of making big errors by compounding it, I was just okay with what happened, and just kind of moved on from there.”

Those errors mainly came early on when he dropped shots on the first and fifth to slip to two over. However, he birdied six and eight to make the turn in level, dropped a shot on 11 before making four birdies in a row from 12.

Jeunghun Wang.

Said the 28 year old: “I honestly didn’t even realise I’d made four in a row. I was like marking my scorecard, and like on the third one, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s three in a row already’. Yeah, obviously had some really good shots, made a couple of putts.

“I was kind of hitting it decently the whole day, and so it was only about a matter of time when a couple of putts went in, and so it was nice to have it all in a row.”

A dropped shot on 17 cost him the outright lead but it was solid start on a difficult day.

He has won once before on the Asian Tour at the International Series Vietnam in 2023, in just his second year as a professional.

“I think honestly, my game’s been trending, and it’s been getting a lot better,” he said. “I know I’ve been telling my team, like, hey, we’re not that far off, we’re getting better, we’re getting closer, and so yeah, today was just a good, good day to kind of see myself up there and thereabouts in the leaderboard, and obviously a good start for the week.”

He’ll be hoping for a good result this week ahead of his brother Scott’s arrival next week for LIV Golf Korea. Scott is enjoying his second stint on the LIV Golf League by virtue of winning The International Series Rankings last year, while Kieran played for Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII team in 2024.

Pictures courtesy Korea Golf Association.