Flawless throughout the final round, Doull’s only blunder in a round of 5-under 67 came at the 72nd hole when he flared his second shot right and then three-putted the par-5 18th green.

That opened the door for fellow West Aussie Haydn Barron (68) to birdie the final hole and match Doull’s four-round total of 17-under par.

On the back edge of the green for two, Barron ran an eagle try that would have won him the tournament 10 feet past, coolly stepping up to hole the birdie putt and send the tournament to extra holes.

The pair both made birdie at the first playoff hole with clutch putts from behind the hole, heading back to the 18th tee to do it all again.

Barron was blocked out with his second after hitting into the left rough, Doull able to fashion a shot just short of the green after also hitting out of the trees left of the fairway.

Barron missed his birdie putt from the front left of the green, Doull clinching a breakthrough Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia title in his rookie season with a birdie from 12 feet.

A loss to Jack Buchanan at the second playoff hole at the WA PGA Championship in October was vindication that Doull could compete at this level, his win projected to move him inside the top 10 on the 2024-2025 Order of Merit.

“It was more telling myself that I could compete out here with these guys,” Doull said of his near miss at Kalgoorlie.

“I mean, the second event, you’ve got Q School status, you don’t really know where you sit. You see scores of 17, 18-under and you think, How can I get to that?

“And then going out and actually doing it, you then know that you can do it. That was the big thing coming out of ‘Kal’.”

Paired with girlfriend and joint runner-up at Webex Players Series South Australia, Kathryn Norris, for the first two rounds, Doull was ecstatic to have Kathryn caddie for him over the weekend.

Keeping him calm throughout the back nine and into the playoff, Doull struggled to hold back the tears as the weight of his win finally sank in.

“You dream about this kind of thing your whole life and for it to finally come to a head, you just let it all out,” he said. “I think that’s mainly where it comes from.”

Defying the age-old adage that it is hard to back up a low round with another after shooting 64 in Round 3 – particularly on Sundays – Doull signalled his intent from the outset.

Three back of Rudgeley through 54 holes, the 25-year-old birdied each of his opening two holes to draw within one of the lead.

When Rudgeley dropped a shot at the par-3 third, she was joined on top by Doull, Barron and Jake McLeod at 14-under par.

What shaped as a Sunday shootout with potential for a playoff turned into a one-man procession as the afternoon unfolded.

Barron dropped a shot to halt his momentum, McLeod made a second double-bogey to go with two eagles and three birdies and Rudgeley missed a golden opportunity to make eagle after driving the green at the par-4 15th.

Hooley-DOULLY 🤯

Jordan Doull has a two-shot lead!#WebexPlayersSeries | #TheChaseIsOn pic.twitter.com/4zWeaRQ8Bp

— PGA of Australia (@PGAofAustralia) January 12, 2025

Out on 5-under 31 with a one-stroke lead from Barron and McLeod, Doull reached 18-under and 6-under on his round with a birdie at the par-4 10th.

As others faltered, he remained steady with six pars in succession.

He hit a brilliant approach shot from the left rough into the 16th green yet was unable to convert a birdie chance that may have closed the door on his pursuers.

Barron was left to rue a three-putt par after also driving the green on 15 and then both missed their birdie putts on 16 from the back edge of the green.

A successfully navigated three-foot par on 17 sent Doull to the 72nd hole with a two-stroke buffer as in the group behind Barron and Rudgeley both saw birdie tries slip agonisingly by on the left side of the hole.

The Webex Junior Players Series Perth also required a playoff hole before Krishav Sheth edge Kloden Brown while Steve Alderson made it two on the trot with his 10-shot win in the Webex All Abilities Players Series.

Photo: Cassandra Edwards/PGA of Australia

With a history at Royal Fremantle Golf Club dating back to his days as a 12-year-old junior, Rumford shot 6-under 66 on Saturday to sit just two strokes back of fellow West Aussie Kirsten Rudgeley heading into Sunday’s final round.

Playing partner Anthony Quayle also shot 66 in Round 3 to be tied with Rumford and three others at 12-under par, the pair heading straight to the chipping green for a short game lesson from one of the world’s greatest exponents.

Now spending his time as a PGA Professional teaching out of Wembley Golf Complex, Rumford was happy to share his insights with a player he will be trying to beat in the final round.

“He asked me on the 15th and I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go’,” said Rumford.

“Then we both started to make a couple (of birdies),” added Quayle.

“I was just signing my scorecard thinking, I wonder if he’d prefer to do it tomorrow, because I didn’t want to fill his head with anything.”

Quayle eagerly took up the offer, however, from a short game wizard who he has admired ever since his junior days in Queensland.

“I still remember watching ‘Rummy’ win on tour,” Quayle recalled.

“He won back-to-back DP World Tour events and I remember being a bit of a kid at the time and just thinking, Holy, that guy’s a gun.

“The first time I got to play with ‘Rummy’ was at Queensland PGA and I just loved it. I was just like, This is awesome.”

Having committed to play the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia season rather than continue his career on the Japan Golf Tour, there is much for Quayle to play for on Sunday.

Currently in eighth position, he is the highest-ranked player on the current Order of Merit thanks to his tie for third at the BMW Australian PGA Championship and top-five finishes at both the Victorian PGA Championship and Gippsland Super 6.

With three spots on the DP World Tour up for grabs at season’s end, Rumford is backing his latest student to play his way back onto a major tour sooner rather than later.

“He’s got such a massive game,” said Rumford. “There’s a massive chance he’ll run top three.

“There’s a pathway to Europe and there’s always a pathway from Europe onto the PGA TOUR where his game is going to flourish anyway.

“What the PGA Tour of Australasia have done with the alliance with the DP World Tour, it’s a fantastic incentive for the guys to stay here.”

Slow-walking people frustrate her – both on and off the golf course – yet her temper is at its most frayed in a different sporting arena.

“On the tennis court, I have such a temper. It’s next level, honestly. Even Dad’s like, ‘Wow, Cass, chill.’ And I’m like, ‘No! I am better than this.’ It really gets on my nerves.”

Yes, LPGA-bound Cassie Porter is the cheery, effervescent person you have seen emerge on the WPGA Tour of Australasia and the Epson Tour the past three years, but there is so much more sitting just beneath the surface.

“There’s definitely a real fire there that burns pretty bright all the time,” Porter confesses.

“I want to be the best. I don’t want that to sound bad, but it’s just a mindset thing.”

“It doesn’t matter what she does, she absolutely has to win,” says Porter’s long-time coach, Dan Morrison.

“I’ll play her at darts, no problems at all. I’ll play her at darts any day of the week. But tennis, no, she’s too good.”

With an LPGA Tour rookie season beckoning, Porter begins her 2025 campaign as one of the marquee names at this week’s Webex Players Series Perth hosted by Minjee and Min Woo Lee at Royal Fremantle Golf Club.

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It is somewhat new territory for the 22-year-old but the next stop along a path she, Morrison and her family have been plotting for close to a decade.

“Six months to a year in, I had almost a hundred percent faith that I knew where we could go with this,” said Morrison, who first started working with Porter when she was just 14 years old.

“I knew she could make LPGA. It’s one of those things that was blindingly obvious.”

‘I woke up one day and couldn’t walk’

Early in 2020, shortly after coming through the stress of completing her final year of high school, everything that an athletic and energetic Cassie Porter had known came to a frightening halt.

At her parents’ home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Porter woke to searing pain in her hip and back, an ailment that she would undergo 16 MRIs in an attempt to diagnose, a range of diagnoses from different specialists failing to find the solution.

It was an 18-month enforced hiatus from the game at a crucial time in a young player’s development, Porter faced with the possibility that she may never play competitive golf again.

“Every doctor I saw told me something different and I was just getting worse. I was in so much pain,” Porter recalls.

“Certain people weren’t scared to tell me that I would never play golf again and that my career’s probably over.

“I just was like, That’s just not it. That’s not where my journey ends.

“I changed my physio and saw a few doctors that I really wanted to see and within six weeks I was back playing pain-free.”

Working closely with Morrison and physiotherapist Jen McKenzie, Porter slowly and methodically rebuilt her body and her game.

When she returned to competitive golf after almost 18 months away, Porter won the Katherine Kirk Classic and Keperra Bowl in quick succession.

At just 19 years of age, she then made the decision to turn professional.

“My coach and I were basically the only ones in our whole circle that were like, ‘Let’s do it’,” Porter says of her move into the pro ranks.

“It was a pretty bold decision, I won’t lie. It did happen quite quickly. I mean, I didn’t play for 18 months. Suddenly I was playing pain-free and straight out the box, I wanted to turn pro.

“I was house-sitting for my sister at the time. I went down to the beach and just cried for four hours. I knew that if I turned professional then… there’s no going back after that.

“It was that cliff that once you take that step, if you have the right mindset, you’re not going to fall. You’re going to fly.”

‘Potential to be a superstar’

Cassie Porter was 12 years old when she first told people closest to her that she wanted to play the LPGA Tour.

Ten years on – and eight years into the plan she and Morrison devised with the United States as the ultimate destination – that pre-teen declaration has become a reality.

A win at the FireKeepers Casino Hotel Championship last June gave Porter the foundation to finish 10th on the Epson Tour points list and secure that coveted LPGA Tour card.

Playing in Perth this week is partly driven by her goal to be top 80 in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings by year’s end as she and Morrison plot what comes next.

“Yes, we’ve ticked off a very long journey to get to this point, but it’s the beginning of the main story now,” says Morrison.

“We need to keep putting that work in and be able to justify the work we’ve done and get a reward for the path we’ve travelled.

“We just want to make sure that we do ourselves proud and get those results that we know she’s capable of.”

Adds Porter: “I’m absolutely going to be grateful for every second because it’s what I’ve dreamed of since I was 12.

“It’s a dream come true, but I am also not going to take that for granted. I’m going to work hard because there’s a lot of stuff that I want to achieve out there.”

From the emergence of Karrie Webb through to the current crop of major winners in Minjee Lee and Hannah Green, no one has witnessed the emergence of more Aussie talent than WPGA Tour of Australasia CEO, Karen Lunn.

Having known Porter since she was 15 years old, Lunn believes Australia’s latest addition to the LPGA Tour has the foundation to join the greats of the game.

“You can get there too early, there’s no doubt about that, and the stars have got to align for you to reach the pinnacle,” Lunn adds.

“The Epson Tour has been the best thing for her. She’s absolutely ready to go to the LPGA now, where maybe a year ago she wasn’t.

“If Cassie stays healthy and if she keeps enjoying it, I have no doubt she can get to the very top of the tree.

“She’s got the potential to be another superstar.”