A mixture of veterans and rookies kick off their 2016 PGA TOUR campaign at this week’s Fry’s.com Open with 10 Australians teeing up in the season’s first event in California.

Rookies Cameron Smith and Rhein Gibson join returning golfers Jarrod Lyle and Stuart Appleby with PGA TOUR regulars Steven Bowditch, Matt Jones, Geoff Ogilvy and John Senden all in the field.

Aaron Baddeley tees up on a sponsor’s exemption while Robert Allenby has made use of his career money list exemption to play the TOUR in 2015/16.

At varying stages of their careers, all 10 Australians face their own pressures as the new season gets underway but Jarrod Lyle, in particular,will be feeling the heat.

After making use of 10 of his allowed 20 starts in his comeback from leukemia last season, the 34-year-old has been hard at work away from the course preparing for his second tilt at regaining the card he lost when diagnosed with cancer in 2012.

With just 10 starts remaining of his medical exemption Lyle needs to earn around $217,000 to be back on the TOUR full time and a good finish this week would go a long way towards that goal.

Having worked hard on his fitness since deciding to return to Australia in May and save his last 10 exemptions for this season,it is a much slimmer and fitter Lyle preparing to tackle the Silverado Golf Club in this week’s tournament.

He wrote on his blog before leaving for the US that a stint playing pro-ams on the Murray River in September revealed his putting needed work but all other parts of his game were good.

Like Lyle, Stuart Appleby also begins the process of trying to regain his card this week after back surgery cut short his 2014/15 season in February this year.

The 20-year TOUR veteran played just seven events last season and finished outside the top-200 on the Fed Ex Cup list.

He needs to earn in the vicinity of $615,000 this year to regain his full status but having missed the cut in two of the three Web.com Tour finals last month and withdrawing from a third his expectations this week are likely not high.

At the other end of the scale rookies Rhein Gibson and Cameron Smith will be itching to get their PGA TOUR careers underway though their preparations could hardly have been more different.

Gibson tees up after four straight weeks of high pressure golf in the Web.com Tour finals where he secured his playing rights while Smith has played only two competitive rounds since the Wyndham Championship in late August.

A bout of illness kept Smith sidelined for several weeks and he missed the cut at his last tournament, the Taiwan Masters, earlier this month.

However, both Gibson and Smith have proved they have the physical skills required to compete at the highest level and it would be a surprise if both didn’t find their feet on TOUR quite quickly.