Defending champion Nick Taylor and Kevin Roy are tied atop the Sony Open gold championships leaderboard after the first round in Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The duo shot identical eight-under 62 to lead Taylor, who won last year in a playoff, posted a bogey free round, for his second lowest opening round of his career. He opened with a 60 enroute to winning the Phoenix Open two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Roy carded seven birdies in 11 holes at the start of his round, and finished with a birdie on the par-five 18th to help earn him his share of the lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four players \u2013 S.H. Kim, Chris Gotterup, Ben Griffin and John Van der Laan – are tied joint third with rounds of 63.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a 7-under 63,Van der Laan posted the best score of the 22 players in the field who are part of the 2026 new member class. He had earned PGA TOUR membership with a No. 17 finish on the 2025 Korn Ferry Tour Points List.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre, the World NO 7, is five back on three under after a 67.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite double bogeys on Nos. 4 and 10, 62-year-old World Golf Hall of Fame member Vijay Singh posted a 2-under 68 in his first round on the PGA TOUR in a non-major since 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First-Round Leaderboard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Defending champion Nick Taylor and Kevin Roy are tied atop the Sony Open gold championships leaderboard after the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-8041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-golf"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed.jpg",2000,1129,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed-768x434.jpg",640,362,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed-1024x578.jpg",640,361,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed-1536x867.jpg",1536,867,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed.jpg",2000,1129,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"International<\/a>","tag_info":"International","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Nick-Taylor_compressed.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8043,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions\/8043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pos.<\/strong><\/td> Player<\/strong><\/td> Total<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> T1<\/td> Nick Taylor<\/td> 62 (-8)<\/td><\/tr> T1<\/td> Kevin Roy<\/td> 62 (-8)<\/td><\/tr> T3<\/td> Ben Griffin<\/td> 63 (-7)<\/td><\/tr> T3<\/td> Chris Gotterup<\/td> 63 (-7)<\/td><\/tr> T3<\/td> John VanDerLaan<\/td> 63 (-7)<\/td><\/tr> T3<\/td> S.H. Kim<\/td> 63 (-7)<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"