Last contested in 2015, the Malaysia Open makes a welcome return to the Asian Tour schedule with a trophy featuring many former Australian greats.

Frank Phillips, Bill Dunk, Graham Marsh, Stewart Ginn, Brian Jones and Terry Gale are all former Malaysia Open champions, Gale’s third title in 1987 the last by an Australian.

Winner of the season-opening Hong Kong Open, Ormsby missed three cuts in his next four events but a tie for seventh at last week’s New Zealand Open in Queenstown – including a superb final round of 5-under 66 – has the South Australian poised to build on his current position at the top of the Asian Tour moneylist.

“It’s been a nice start to the year for me,” Ormsby told Asian Tour Media.

“Obviously, I had a great week in Hong Kong but didn’t play so well after that. It was a good return to form last week in New Zealand and I’m feeling good coming to Malaysia this week.

“It’s absolutely fantastic to have the Malaysian Open back on the schedule. It’s a great event. Seeing the trophy when we drove in this morning and seeing so many big names on it, it just feels great to be playing in such a storied event which has been around for a long time.”

The talk among players leading up to Thursday’s opening round is the firmness of the greens at Kota Permai Golf and Country Club.

Kota Permai last hosted the Malaysia Open in 2008 and Ormsby likes the way it sets up for his game.

“It’s always nice coming to play in Kuala Lumpur,” said Ormsby, who with $US209,403 in prizemoney is just over $96,000 ahead of Thailand superstar Jazz Janewattananond on the Order of Merit.

“We’ve played a lot of golf courses here and this week’s course is in great condition.

“You need to be sharp around the greens here. The course is actually not quite long which sets up well for me so I’ll just go about my business and see how it goes.

“You’ve just got to keep the ball in play.”

Ormsby is one of 13 Australians in the field this week including Malaysia Amateur champion Lawry Flynn, the Queensland left-hander playing in just his fourth professional event outside his home state. It also represents the second event of the year for Q School graduate Will Heffernan who will be eager to make a strong impression.

As the Asian Tour season resumes the impact of the coronavirus looms large, the prospect of condensing the schedule a very real possibility.

The European Tour has already made the decision to postpone both the Maybank Championship in Malaysia and the Volvo China Open scheduled for April but veteran Aussie Marcus Fraser told the PGA of Australia that he never considered skipping this week’s event, admitting that the effect the outbreak is having was noticeable in transit.

“It’s definitely quiet up here,” said Fraser.

“I travelled through Singapore Airport and it was a lot quieter than normal.”

Adam Blyth is the first of the Aussies in action in Round 1, teeing off at 11am AEDT. The other Australians playing the Malaysia Open are Scott Strange, Terry Pilkadaris, Travis Smyth, Daniel Fox, Ben Eccles, Jake Higginbottom, Andrew Dodt and Josh Younger.