For the first eight years of my life, I lived at a place called Christies Beach south of Adelaide.

The beach there is pretty spectacular. Witton Bluff is also a great spot to get photos of the coastline and has a walkway that locals and visitors love.

Our neighbour at Christies Beach used to hit golf balls into the net in his backyard. I’d pop my head over to see what he was doing and he’d invite me to come and hit a few.

We moved to Willunga when I was nine to a house just across the road from the golf course.

I didn’t start playing golf straight away; I was too busy riding my push bike with my mates from one end of town to the other.

Willunga was a great place to grow up. Having spent five years at college in America and travelled the last couple of years, I really appreciate the open space we have in Willunga. The freedom we had to move around town with no worries in the world.

That’s something that I now know that I took for granted.

We’d ride five or 10 kilometres to our mate’s place or go foraging in the bushes to find what we could. A country-style upbringing in Willunga was really cool.

When we were about 13, Ben Layton would come to my house – that’s us in the photo as juniors – and we’d jump the fence and go play holes at Willunga every night after school.

Occasionally Ben’s mum would play on a Tuesday and she’d be like, ‘Ben, I saw a patch of divots on the 13th. Isn’t that where you and Lachy go and practice?’ Ben would come over to me and say, ‘We’ve got to be careful with our divots.’

Now, I’d describe Willunga as a very organic town.

Our house shares a boundary with vineyards of one of the local wineries and our property used to be an old almond grove.

Willunga is most famous for its wines and its almonds. It used to be a big almond producer and every year we have the Willunga Almond Blossom Festival.

The McLaren Vale region is known around the world for the wines it produces but everyone in town is growing something and growing it in all the right ways.

The Willunga Farmers Market draws people down from Adelaide every Saturday where you can get everything from apples, local meats, honey, bread, every fruit and vegetable you can poke a stick at and even boutique products such as pate.

If you like your coffee, The Golden Fleece Café is our go-to and if you like something a bit stronger, there are three main pubs in town. Because they’re on the hill, the locals know them as the top pub, middle pub and bottom pub but they’re actually called the Old Bush Inn, the Willunga Hotel and the Alma Hotel.

I’ve got Haydn Barron, Lachy Armour and Josh Greer staying with me this week and I think they’re as excited as I am to have some home-cooked meals.

Mum is an excellent cook but her No.1 dish, in my eyes, is her duck risotto.

I also love any kind of steak and vegetables but I know the boys are looking forward to the duck risotto.

We might have to save that until Saturday night though; make them earn it.

As for the tournament itself, I know everyone at the club and all the members are pumped to have a Tour event at their home course.

I played with the course superintendent a couple of weeks ago and he has got the course looking amazing.

The greens aren’t going to be that quick but a great surface to putt on, just because there is a fair bit of slope. What people don’t realise that is that Willunga is at the base of the Adelaide Hills and there’s still a large influence. From afar it can look flat, but it’s actually on a bit of a slope.

That’s something to keep in mind for the boys who have never played there before; everything runs down the hill, and you might not catch that with your eyes.

It’s easy to put a lot of external pressure on myself, being at my home course, but I’m going to treat it just like any other week.

I’m sure there might be some external things that I’ll be doing away from golf but apart from that, it will be business as usual.

And hopefully a celebration at the clubhouse with the Willunga members on Sunday night.