Vilips will further his progression when he plays his first major championship as a professional at the US PGA Championship starting late tonight AEST, the 23-year-old paired with Thorbjorn Olesen and Laurie Canter for rounds one and two.

A maiden PGA TOUR win in just his fourth start at the Puerto Rico Open in March earned Vilips his place in the field at Quail Hollow Club, and gave Ogilvy further cause to sit up and take notice.

Named captain of the International team for the 2026 matches in Chicago a fortnight ago, Ogilvy has been aware of Vilips from his day as a pint-sized precocious kid with his own YouTube channel collecting junior trophies across the globe.

That he is now being considered a contender to take on the might of the US is a surprise even to the man tasked with engineering an International win more than 25 years in the making.

“I’m not massive on social media, but I was always pretty aware that he was pretty good,” said Ogilvy.

“He went to Stanford and went all four years, which was impressive because these prodigies usually end up getting out there too early. That was really smart.

“Then he comes out of college and just goes win-win bang. And now he’s out here and he’s won on the main Tour. It’s pretty impressive.

“If you look at the top players in the world, usually they’ve had lives like him. Tiger (Woods) and Justin Thomas and (Phil) Mickelson and all these guys, and Ernie Els, they start golf when they’re starting to walk.

“And Karl was the same.

“That transition from college or amateur golf to pro golf is not easy – we’ve seen a lot of guys stumble at that hurdle – but he’s just made it look pretty easy.

“The future is bright for him. He’s definitely on my radar.”

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Vilips first came on the radar of Jason Day’s long-time coach Colin Swatton at the 2014 US Open at Pinehurst when introduced by Karl’s father, Paul Vilips.

It wasn’t until Vilips broke his finger playing basketball and was enduring a challenging period in his development that Golf Australia’s High Performance Director, Brad James, reached out in 2020 to see if Swatton would coach a talented teen in need of direction.

“I met a kid that was extremely low on confidence, didn’t know really the direction his game was going to come out on the back end of the surgery,” Swatton shared.

“He was looking at changing grip positions because of the broken finger and he had some stuff going on in his swing that was definitely a red flag.

“Paul basically asked me to get involved from a short-game perspective and it wasn’t long until I was working with him from a long-game perspective.”

As he refines a swing and overall game that has already proven itself at the highest level, Swatton has marvelled at Vilips’ mental make-up.

Before he had played his first event as a PGA TOUR member, Vilips was speaking excitedly about playing the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town, one of his favourite golf courses.

The issue, as Swatton saw it, was that the RBC was a limited-field Signature Event worth $US20 million that his rookie charge was a long shot of playing.

And then Puerto Rico happened.

“I just thought to myself, here’s a kid that saw himself somewhere months before it happened,” Swatton added.

“And it’s the law of attraction. What you focus on is what will become your beliefs and your future.

“He wasn’t focused on anything else other than where he thinks he needs to be.

“It took Jason three years to figure out how to win on the PGA TOUR and he’s won within the first four events of being on TOUR.

“He’s definitely ahead of the curve and I think he could be really, really special.

“Given the right environment, given the right people around him, given the right information, I think he could be one of Australian’s great golfers.”

Reunited at the start of this year, it is 10 years since Swatton and Day celebrated one of the seminal moments in Australian golf when they fulfilled major championship destiny at the 2015 US PGA Championship at Whistling Straits.

Not only did it mark the summit of a shared journey that began when Day came under Swatton’s watch as a troubled teen attending the Hills International School west of the Gold Coast, it was the centrepiece in a stretch of golf that made Day the best player in the game.

In the decade since, Day’s family with wife Ellie has expanded to five children, he has endured a debilitating back injury and, after parting ways with Swatton in 2020, sought swing changes with a range of coaches and a period where he chose to go solo.

The past decade has also seen Day record runner-up finishes at the PGA Championship (2016) and The Open Championship (2023) and win a further six times on the PGA TOUR, spending 51 weeks as the world No.1.

Now 37 years of age, Day spent the majority of 2022 outside the top 100 but has enjoyed a resurgence, a resurgence Swatton believes can continue by looking back at what made him great in the first place.

“Jase just needs to, in his own words, quiet the noise that he’s been going through for the last three or four years,” said Swatton, who has both Day and rookie Karl Vilips in the field this week at Quail Hollow Club.

“He also needs to get back to the things that have made him great, and I think he’s gotten away from those a little bit in the last three or four years.

“Part of my job and part of my role is to come back in and say, ‘Hey, this is what you did when you were the best player in the world.’ Remind him of that, but also to hold him somewhat accountable to that. To be able to say, ‘This is what you did. We need to get back to that winning formula and allow everything else to fall into place.’”

When the pair combined for major championship glory, Day was a tenacious 27-year-old in the midst of four wins in the space of six events with world golf at his mercy.

The motivating forces may have changed in the decade since, yet Swatton sees the game and a new cause driving him to the best in the sport again.

“Jason’s in a different place now. He’s got five kids; Dash (Day’s eldest) is a very fine golfer in his own right,” said Swatton.

“When you reach the highest of highs and you become the best player in the world, you get to the top of the mountain and you go, OK, that’s great, it smells and looks a little different up here.

“I think Jase wants to set examples and sort of say, ‘This is what your dad did, but also, too, this is who your dad is.’ Set examples, lifetime lessons for his kids.

“I think he wants to prove not only to himself, but to his family, that this is who Jason Day is.

“I’ve definitely seen the signs that I need to see to feel encouraged and I think Jason’s seen the signs that he needs to also feel encouraged.

“Whether it’s this year or not, I definitely think he’s got another (major) in him, if not more.”

Day was at the peak of his powers when he held off world No.1 Jordan Spieth at the 2015 PGA Championship with Swatton on the bag.

With legacy on his shoulders and Lake Michigan sitting ominously to his left, Day delivered a superb tee shot to the heart of the green at the par-3 17th to protect his three-shot advantage.

When Day marked his ball after his birdie putt from 40 feet came to rest a foot from the cup on the 72nd hole, tears began to flow.

Reflecting on that moment, Swatton admitted that he started to become overcome by emotion back in the 18th fairway.

“It is a tough hole to get it done, to be fair. It’s a difficult shot,” Swatton recalled of the par-4 finisher.

“It’s a semi-blind tee shot and the second shot you are hitting to this amphitheatre green with the whole clubhouse in the background and the crowd lining the right side of the fairway.

“I remember Jason turning to me and I’m trying to have this conversation with him. I’m trying to give him the yardage, give him the wind direction, give him everything else and he just said, ‘Tell me where to hit it.’

“It was probably that moment, for the first time all day, that I kind of got a little nervous and I allowed the moment to get a little bit… not out of control, but just envelop us both.

“It was like, you knock it on the green here and you manage the two putt and you’re going to become a major championship winner and win the PGA Championship.

“That’s probably the moment that I kind of allowed it to get maybe a little too much for the both of us.

“That embrace after he knocked that putt in and watching Jase just do the belly cry and sob, there’s nothing better than that.”

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The former US Open champion follows David Graham (1994), Peter Thomson (1996, 1998, 2000) and Greg Norman (2009, 2011) as Aussie captains of the Internationals.

Ogilvy, 47, played on three consecutive International Teams (2007, 2009, 2011), where he amassed a 7-6-1 record.

He also served as a captain’s assistant in the last four iterations of the event. The Australian owns eight career PGA TOUR victories, in addition to winning two of Australia’s biggest titles – the 2008 Australian PGA and 2010 Australian Open.

“The Presidents Cup has been a significant part of my career. I am honored to now take on the role of Captain of the International Team for the 2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah Country Club’s Course #3, a place that means a great deal to me,” Ogilvy said.

“Since Ernie Els debuted the shield in 2019, the International Team’s spirit has intensified and grown as we have rallied around this symbol, which embodies our shared ambition and unifies both players and fans.

“I intend to carry that momentum forward, just as the captains before me have, to build strong support for our international players in the lead-up and throughout the event.”

Ogilvy’s golf course design firm, OCM, oversaw the renovation of Course #3 – a two-year project that delivered a much larger scale to match the topography of the property. The course, now punctuated by larger greens, scale bunkering and wider fairways, along with a new routing, re-opened to play in the summer of 2024.

PGA TOUR Commissioner Joel Monahan said: “Geoff Ogilvy is the perfect captain to lead the International Team into Chicago in 2026, drawing on both his great history with the Presidents Cup and a vast knowledge of Medinah.

“Geoff will capitalise on the upward trend of the International Team, where we have seen a passionate level of support from players and fans over the years.

“With his pedigree as a major champion and experience in the team room, Geoff was primed to take on this role for the 16th edition of the event.”

Brandt Snedeker was named captain of the defending champion United States team.