Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert both began their golf journey in regional Victoria, Herbert at the Neangar Park Golf Club in Bendigo and Leishman three hours south at Warrnambool Golf Club.

As the pair prepare to defend the titles they won concurrently on Australia Day in 2020 in California and Dubai respectively, Leishman reflected on why his Warrnambool roots played such a critical role in his Farmers Insurance Open win at Torrey Pines Golf Club 12 months ago.

“It reminds me a lot of home,” Leishman said in his fifth press conference as a PGA TOUR defending champion.

“The grasses here at Torrey Pines I grew up on at Warrnambool.

“It was my first trip to America coming to this golf course for the Junior World in 2001. And you’ve got to be pretty precise around here, but there are places you can miss it.

“If you know where those places are and those places where you can’t hit it, you can get it around if you don’t have your best stuff, which I probably showed on Sunday last year.”

Leishman struggled to recapture that form when the PGA TOUR resumed following its COVID-19 suspension, time spent with long-time coach Denis McDade providing a solution that he put into practice in finishing tied for fourth at the Sony Open two weeks ago.

While he clings tightly to his Warrnambool roots, Leishman admitted the difficulty in being unable to return to Australia over summer and visit with family and friends.

“This is the first year in my career or maybe in my life that I haven’t been able to go to Australia at all for the entire year,” said Leishman. “I haven’t seen my parents for a year.

“It’s been an interesting one. I guess golf has caught the brunt of it in Australia with no tournaments last year. I did miss it, I love going back and playing. Hopefully we can do that this year and get things back to normal.”

Life has been far from normal too for Herbert ahead of his Omega Dubai Desert Classic defence.

He’s had to become more self-reliant on tour, he’s developed a passion for cooking and cleaning around the house and has invested time in keeping pace with the distance explosion taking place in world golf.

“Lucas isn’t short but if other guys are getting longer and he’s not getting any more distance then he’s getting left behind,” said Herbert’s coach, PGA Professional Dominic Azzopardi.

“As a coach, even after working with him for so long, my biggest fear is not growing with him and the game and being left behind. I’ve got to stay ahead of Lucas in my knowledge of the game and techniques and trends.

“I’m very open to researching and looking at these sorts of things. I think it’s my job to that and be able to have some good chats with him about these issues as the game changes.

“We got straight on the phone to TaylorMade and discussed what ‘DJ’ (Dustin Johnson) has done in that space and Rory (McIlroy) and what Tiger (Woods) and Jason (Day) haven’t done. That was really interesting, to find out what those guys had done.

“TaylorMade then sent some shafts out to us that were 2 to 2-1/2 inches longer. We put that in his existing driver and had to tweak a few things technically. We had to get that ball position a hell of a lot further forward, we had to get the loft down on his driver and really completely change the way he delivered the club to the ball.

“Straight away we were getting 3-5mph more club speed and that was resulting in 15-20 yards further in the air.

“And we weren’t finding that there was any greater dispersion.”

Herbert is aiming to become just the second Australian after Cameron Smith (2018 and 2019 Australian PGA) to successfully defend a European Tour title since Greg Norman’s 1981 and 1982 Dunlop Masters victories.

Geoff Ogilvy is the last Australian to successfully defend a PGA TOUR title, winning the season-opening Sentry Tournament of Champions in 2009 and 2010.

Round 1 tee times AEDT

European Tour
Omega Dubai Desert Classic
Emirates GC, Dubai, UAE
2.30pm*              Jason Scrivener, Andy Sullivan, Haotong Li
2.50pm*              Lucas Herbert, Justin Rose, Rafa Cabrera Bello
3pm       Ryan Fox, David Langley, Benjamin Hebert
3.40pm*              Scott Hend, Joost Luiten, Thorbjørn Olesen
6.40pm*              Min Woo Lee, Marcus Kinhult, Pablo Larrazabal
6.50pm*              Wade Ormsby, Victor Dubuisson, David Horsey

Defending champion: Lucas Herbert
Past Aussie winners: Richard Green (1997), Lucas Herbert (2020)
Top Aussie prediction: Lucas Herbert
TV schedule: 3pm-8pm and 10.30pm-12.30am Thursday; 6.30pm-12.30am Friday; 7.30pm-12am Saturday and Sunday on Fox Sports 503.

PGA TOUR
Farmers Insurance Open
Torrey Pines GC (South Cse), San Diego, California
South Course
4.50am Danny Lee, Byeong Hun An, Harold Varner III
5.10am Aaron Baddeley, Matt Every, Chesson Hadley
5.10am*              Matt Jones, Sam Ryder, Adam Schenk
5.30am Marc Leishman, Jason Day, Jon Rahm
5.50am Cameron Percy, Charl Schwartzel, Camilo Villegas

North Course
4am*     Cameron Davis, Beau Hossler, Xinjun Zhang
5am*     Rhein Gibson, Rob Oppenheim, Cameron Young
5.10am*              Tim Wilkinson, Alex Noren, Anirban Lahiri
5.30am Cameron Smith, Jason Kokrak, Dylan Frittelli
5.40am Adam Scott, Russell Knox, Jimmy Walker
5.50am John Senden, K.J. Choi, Denny McCarthy

Defending champion: Marc Leishman
Past Aussie winners: Jason Day (2015, 2018), Marc Leishman (2020)
Top Aussie prediction: Marc Leishman
TV schedule: Live 7am-11am Friday and Saturday; Live 5am-10am Sunday; 5am-10.30am Monday on Fox Sports 503.

* Starting from 10th tee