Want to recieve exclusive news, videos, tournament highlights, golf important tips and more ?
Want to recieve exclusive news, videos, tournament highlights, golf important tips and more ?
Novocastrian Blake Windred is in position to turn a tournament invitation into a European Tour card after taking a share of the lead at the halfway mark of the Challenge de España at Iberostar Real Club de Golf Novo Sancti Petri.
As the golf world turns much of its attention to the US Open this week, the European Challenge Tour event in Spain is already through 36 holes, Windred reeled off an eagle at the par-5 second and five birdies in a round of 7-under 65, joining Spaniard Lucas Vacarisas at 11-under and with a one-stroke advantage at the top of the leaderboard.
The recipient of an invite by the Head of the Challenge Tour, Windred said he is hoping to turn a consistent run of tournament golf into a good result over the closing two rounds.
“I have been lucky enough to have a couple of invites and play pretty much every week for the last six weeks,” said Windred.
“I am trying to make the most of those invites and play some good golf and hopefully I can stay out here.”
Playing in his sixth event of the season, Windred has made the cut in each of his five starts to date, a tie for 18th at the Challenge de Cadiz that finished on Sunday with a closing round of 67 an indicator that he was approaching his best form.
Coached by Gary Barter at The Australian Golf Club, the 23-year-old admitted that it has been an adjustment competing against elite professionals week after week.
“It is a different kind of game playing week in week out with some of the best players in the world,” said Windred, who was second at the ISUZU Queensland Open and sixth at the Golf Challenge NSW Open prior to leaving for Europe.
“Honestly, I think some of the best players out here are going to be top ten players in the world.
“I do not have a ticket booked home yet. It is pretty expensive heading back to Australia and then 14 days in a hotel room in isolation doesn’t sound too good.
“My plan is to just play some good golf and hope it is over by the time I head home.”
Windred jumped 14 places to 68th in the Road to Mallorca Order of Merit on the back of his top-20 finish last week and can move inside the top 10 with a win in Friday’s final round.
Kiwi Daniel Hillier is one of five players one shot behind Windred and Vacarisas at 10-under with Dimi Papadatos (5-under) also qualifying for the final two rounds. Jarryd Felton and Deyen Lawson both missed the cut.
The irony wasn’t lost on Geoff Ogilvy. The scene of one of Greg Norman’s many Major heartbreaks, Winged Foot Golf Club and the events of the 1984 US Open were ingrained into the brain of Ogilvy from a very young age.
He watched the tape of that tournament and the 18-hole playoff that decided it over and over and over again, yet here he was as the 2006 US Open champion, the beneficiary of one of the most dramatic final-hole collapses in golf history.
“I kind of feel bad that no one ever did this for Greg,” Ogilvy offered as he addressed a media throng still trying to come to grips with how their new champion came to be sitting before them.
“No one ever gave him the luck I got today on the last few holes.”
If either Phil Mickelson or Colin Montgomerie par the 72nd hole they win a US Open that would have dramatically altered their careers for vastly different reasons. Yet both made double bogey and were asked to somehow make sense of it.
“I had it right in my hands and I let it go,” Mickelson said. “I just can’t believe I did that.”
“This is as difficult as it gets,” said Montgomerie. “You wonder sometimes why you put yourself through this.”
For Ogilvy, it was the realisation of a boyhood dream as he joined David Graham as the only Australian men to win the US Open.
“Obviously you dream about winning a major championship,” Ogilvy said.
“To have it actually happen, once it sinks in, it’s pretty special.”
WHAT CAME BEFORE
Geoff Ogilvy’s success on the PGA TOUR was something of a slow burn.
His career tally of eight wins in the US puts him level with David Graham and Bruce Devlin and equal eighth for most PGA TOUR wins by an Australian but his first didn’t come until his fifth season on tour.
He won the 2005 Chrysler Classic of Tucson while the big guns were playing the WGC-Accenture Match Play.
Twelve months later he turned up and won that event.
Less than four months later he arrived at famed Winged Foot Golf Club in New York having finished top six at the final two majors of 2005 and tied for 16th at the 2006 Masters, yet he was far from a fancied pick.
Michelle Wie attracted plenty of attention in her attempt to qualify but the headlines were dominated by the pending duel between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
Woods was making his first start since the passing of his father, Earl, nine weeks earlier while Mickelson arrived as the sentimental and bookmaker’s favourite and seeking to win a third consecutive Major.
“I’m just trying to win one,” said Mickelson, who had finished runner-up in two of the past three US Opens. “All I’m trying to do is be successful on this one golf course at this one event.”
HOW IT UNFOLDED
Drawn to play the opening two rounds with Englishman David Howell and American Bo Van Pelt, Ogilvy’s campaign began at 2.09pm on Thursday and he was two back at the end of day one with a round of 1-over 71, Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie the only player to break par in the opening round.
There were 14 players within two shots of the lead but by the end of Round 2 Woods no longer featured, missing the cut with a two-round total of 152.
Ogilvy stayed within two of the lead with a second round of even par 70, now trailing American Steve Stricker who had come through qualifying to even play in the event.
Drawn to play with Kenneth Ferrie in the second-to-last group on Saturday, Ogilvy was adamant that he was revelling in the test of intestinal fortitude that comes at a US Open.
“I’m trying to enjoy it,” said Ogilvy.
“It’s not the most fun in the world to be grinding away for pars and missing greens with semi easy shots and having a hard time hitting fairways, but the challenge of getting it up and down and grinding it out, that’s a fun challenge when I’m able to get it done.
“That’s how I’m looking at it, just trying to enjoy it.”
When Mickeslon assumed a share of the 54-hole lead alongside Ferrie at the completion of Round 3, American writers such as Jim Litke from The Associated Press bemoaned the lack of star power at the pointy end of the leaderboard.
“It’s hard to find anyone capable of pushing Lefty out of his comfort zone,” Litke wrote.
Ogilvy, meanwhile, thought his spot in the penultimate group with Ian Poulter one off the lead was exactly where he needed to be after a third round of 2-over 72.
“I started today maybe two back and I ended the day one back, so I’m going forward,” Ogilvy told the assembled press.
“If you told me on Thursday I was going to play in the second to the last group only one shot behind, I’d have been happy.”
If he was viewed as an unlikely threat to Mickelson prior to Sunday – despite his World Match Play title four months earlier – the reaction to Ogilvy’s dramatic win was equally dismissive.
Newspapers such as the Ithaca Journal were fixated on the Mickelson and Montgomerie collapses, Ogilvy’s short-game wizardry on holes 17 and 18 something of an afterthought to the drama that unfolded.
A chip-in from the fringe at 17 followed by an up-and-down straight from the Melbourne Sandbelt playbook at the last gave Ogilvy a Sunday score of 2-over 72 and the clubhouse lead at 5-over for the championship.
Montgomerie had already made a mess of the 72nd hole by making double bogey to post 6-over but when Mickelson stood on the 18th tee at 4-over par a playoff was viewed by many as the worst-case scenario, a coronation into golf immortality a certainty with a four.
Yet the American’s wild drive and even wilder decision to try and carve a slice around a tree from beside the hospitality tents in the left rough that saw his ball advance just 25 yards left the unlikeliest up-and-down for the championship.
His third shot went into the greenside bunker, his fourth over the green, fifth to force a playoff never threatened the cup before the sixth finally fell, and Ogilvy and the New York galleries were left stunned at what had just transpired.
“I think I was the beneficiary of a little bit of charity,” Ogilvy later said.
“I was hitting that putt thinking this may get me in a playoff. I was pretty nervy over it; it was a pretty big putt. But I never thought Phil would make bogey at the last. He’ll hit it on the green, make a par, make New York happy, but it worked out in my favour.
“Sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don’t, and I’m glad it happened in the US Open.”
WHAT FOLLOWED
In the immediate aftermath of his Major triumph Ogilvy moved into the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time, a status he would hold for 120 weeks during his career.
Renowned for his interest in golf course architecture, Ogilvy’s best results invariably came at the game’s biggest events.
When he won the Accenture Match Play for a second time in 2009 Ogilvy was second only to Tiger Woods for most World Golf Championship wins and he won the annual congregation of PGA TOUR winners in Hawaii in consecutive years in 2009 and 2010.
A strong supporter of the PGA Tour of Australasia, Ogilvy continued his success when he returned home, winning the 2008 Australian PGA Championship at Coolum and the 2010 Australian Open at The Lakes Golf Club in Sydney.
Ogilvy recorded eight top-10 finishes in Major championships during his career, his last coming at the 2012 Open Championship at Royal Lytham.
Hannah Green has been rewarded for her consistent form by a ranking for posterity … she is now the top-ranked Australian in the world, edging Minjee Lee.
Since the inception of the women’s world rankings in 2006 only Karrie Webb (for nine straight years) and Lee (since 2015) have held the top slot among Australians, but Green this week joined that pair as holding the top spot.
Her world ranking jumped one spot to No. 14 in this week’s list after she finished third in the Mediheal Championship in San Francisco, closing with a 66. Lee finished off the pace and dipped one spot to No. 15, meaning that Green is now the No. 1 ranked Aussie.
The top-ranked Australian man is Cameron Smith at No. 28.
Green, 24, has had two third-place finishes this year as she prepares to take on the season’s next major — the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship — in nine days’ time.
Two years ago she became just the third Australian woman — behind Webb and Jan Stephenson — to win a major, and her ranking has risen steadily since.
Brisbane’s Tim Hart has expressed his desire to take his red-hot Adidas Pro-Am Series form to the United States later this year after recording his fifth win in his past six starts at the Lunar Mining Emerald Pro-Am at Emerald Golf Club on Sunday.
Third in the Glencore Oaky Creek Coal Pro-Am on Friday, Hart began the second round in Emerald two shots behind overnight leader Gavin Fairfax but took little time to reduce the deficit.
Starting his round on the 10th hole, Hart burst out of the blocks by reeling off five birdies in his first seven holes to take a share of the lead alongside fellow Queenslander Peter Martin.
Back-to-back bogeys to close out his front nine stalled the birdie machine temporarily but three more on his inward nine completed his round of 6-under 64 and a two-round total of 10-under.
It was enough to finish one stroke clear of Martin (64) with Shae Wools-Cobb a further shot back in outright third after he too shot 64 on Sunday.
A prolific pro-am winner in recent years, Hart has been working hard with coach Richard Woodhouse to transfer his results in the shorter events into four-round success and believes he is now finally ready to take his game to the world.
“I am working towards playing in the US later in the year and these recent results are giving me the confidence I need before I go over,” Hart said.
“I have good memories playing up here and I just drew on those memories today to get me over the line.”
Winner of the Hidden Valley Whitsundays North Queensland Series, Hart now takes a 12-shot lead in the Onsite Rental Group Mining Towns Series with two events remaining.
The production line of outstanding talent continues out of Western Australia with amateur Haydn Barron recording his first win in a professional event at the two-day Mitchell and Brown Spalding Park Open at Spalding Park Golf Club in Geraldton on Sunday.
With veterans and accomplished PGA Tour of Australasia players eager to apply early pressure, Barron began Sunday’s second round with a three-stroke advantage and did enough to hold them at bay, closing with a 3-under par round of 69 and a two-round total of 9-under for a one-stroke victory.
Runner-up at the WA Open to fellow amateur Hayden Hopewell late last year, Barron continues to build an impressive resume as he considers the possibility of joining the professional ranks.
With the Spalding Park Golf Club presented in impeccable fashion and weather to match a charge was bound to come from somewhere and two players in particular ensured Barron had to work to the end.
Kwinana Pro-Am winner Andrew Kelly peeled off five birdies in his final 10 holes in a round of 5-under 67 to reach 8-under for the 36-holes while the round of the day came from part-time professional Stephen Dartnall.
Like Kelly, the 2016 WA PGA champion did the majority of his best work on the back nine, making the turn in 2-under and adding further birdies at 10, 11, 15 and 17 to shoot 6-under 66 and earn outright third position.
Former Spalding Park Open winner Dean Alaban added a second straight round of 2-under 70 to earn a share of fourth alongside Simon Houston who had an eagle, six birdies, a bogey and a double-bogey in a wildly fluctuating round of 5-under 67.
The next Adidas Pro-Am Series event scheduled for Western Australia is the Rio Tinto Karratha Pro-Am at Karratha Country Club on Thursday.
A leg injury that almost forced his withdrawal from the tournament proved to be no impediment to Brisbane’s Gavin Fairfax as he edged one stroke clear after the opening round of the Lunar Mining Emerald Pro-Am at Emerald Golf Club on Saturday.
The third event in the Onsite Rental Group Mining Towns Series attracted a field bursting with accomplished PGA Tour of Australasia regulars but it was Fairfax who produced a gem of a round on day one to take the lead into Sunday’s final round.
An Adidas Pro-Am Series winner at Redland Bay in April, Fairfax was third at the Moranbah Pro-Am a week ago but a troublesome leg injury gave the 32-year-old cause to consider not teeing it up at all on the eve of the tournament.
Thankfully for Fairfax, a round of 6-under 64 consisting of seven birdies and a lone bogey meant that he could nurse his injured leg all the way to the 18th hole.
“I just tried to take it easy out there today,” Fairfax explained.
“Thankfully I hit the ball straight so I didn’t have to walk as far which was good.
“The greens are very similar to what I play on back home in Brisbane so I felt comfortable around the greens today.”
An eagle at the 538-metre par-5 13th hole was the highlight of Aaron Wilkin’s opening round of 5-under 67 to sit in outright second position with current Onsite Rental Group Mining Towns Series leader Tim Hart a further shot back on 4-under 66 to be solo third with a day to play.
Glencore Oaky Creek Coal Pro-Am winner James Grierson is in position for a second straight win after a round of 3-under 67 to be part of a four-way tie for fourth alongside Lucas Higgins, Peter Martin and Nathan Barbieri.
Round 2 commences at 7am on Sunday morning with Fairfax to tee off at 12.15pm from the first tee.
Two-time champion Daniel Fox has turned to mental coach Sean Lynch in the hope of rediscovering a winning mindset at the Mitchell and Brown Spalding Park Open in Geraldton this weekend.
Winner in 2019 by one-stroke in what has been a 54-hole event in the past, Fox has this week spent time thinking back to his victory in 2012 and the mental approach he and Lynch adopted before finding success at Spalding Park Golf Club.
Conceding that sporadic tournament play since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen some bad habits resurface with regards to his mental approach to the game, Fox hopes to use the successes of the past to rediscover his mojo.
“I’d been struggling to get some things happening on the course and then the start of that week things started to really click,” Fox recalled of his 2012 triumph.
“I’d been working with Sean Lynch and just started on the medication for ADHD and all of a sudden all of the mental stuff we’d been working on just clicked.
“I’ve slipped back into some really bad habits mentally and I haven’t been disciplined enough and I haven’t been practising because there hasn’t been anything to play in.
“It’s a bad thing for me if I get out of my routine and it feels like we’ve been out of the routine since March of last year.
“I had a chat with Sean again this week. I’ve been having a few issues and asked him if there were any side effects from the medication but he said I’ve got bad habits and always had them which is why it’s important for me to continue to practise that mental stuff, and I’d let that go.”
Drawn to play with South West Open champion Brady Watt in the opening round, Fox will again have to best a strong field to record a third Spalding Park Open victory.
The 44-year-old warned though that not only does the golf course suit him but there are higher powers who may have contributed to his strong results in the past.
“It’s always treated me really well and if things have needed to go my way they have done,” said Fox.
“It feels like I’m gifted a few things here by the golf gods or whoever.
“It’s a golf course where you have to really position your ball, keep your ball below the hole because the greens are usually pretty quick and that stuff feeds into my preferred way of playing the game.
“This is the type of course where you build momentum slowly. You can get on a run here and have five or six birdies in the space of seven or eight holes.
“If you par the rest that’s fine but if you’re making bogeys or slip up and make a double there’s a residual effect of making a mistake that can last a hole or two.
“If you start getting a bit too cavalier with your lines and stuff like that you’ll get caught out.
“If I get hot with the putter – which I tend to do around here – then I can get to 5 or 6-under without taking too many risks.
“The golf course sets up great for me and I’ve known Byron Clarkson the GM and Head Professional since we played State Schoolboys together.
“His whole family is involved and it’s just such a great family atmosphere and event. They do everything they can to make the event enjoyable.
“When you go to events where you feel like you’re relaxed and you can concentrate on what you’re doing, it’s got a lot of things going for it.”
Former representative rugby player James Grierson has taken a significant step in establishing his professional golf credentials with a breakthrough win at the Glencore Oaky Creek Coal Pro-Am at Tieri Country Club.
The second event in the Onsite Rental Group Mining Towns Series being played in Central Queensland, Grierson and fellow New South Welshman Jay Mackenzie started the second round locked together and went toe-to-toe over the opening nine holes.
Backing up from their opening rounds of 6-under 66, the pair traded birdies over the opening holes but after making the turn two shots in front Grierson put the hammer down on his way to the clubhouse.
A birdie at the 318-metre par-4 13th was followed by an eagle at the par-5 15th, further birdies at 16 and 18 resulting in a round of 7-under 65 and a commanding four-stroke victory, his first since turning professional in 2019.
“This will just give me the confidence to know that I can compete with the bigger name players,” said Grierson, who grew up in Forbes in Central West NSW and represented Country NSW.
“I grew up on a course like this so I felt comfortable playing around here.”
Named the Forbes Sportsperson of the Year in 2011 for his exploits in golf and rugby league, Grierson was 26 when he turned professional and has proven in recent PGA Tour of Australasia events that he has the game to make a career out of golf.
He was top 25 at the Moonah Links PGA Classic and TPS Sydney at Bonnie Doon and then finished tied for 19th at the ISUZU Queensland Open, this victory providing an important confidence boost so early in his career.
Grierson’s win also sees him jump up to third place in the Onsite Rental Group Mining Towns Series behind Mackenzie and series leader Tim Hart, who finished in a tie for third with Douglas Klein and PGA Associate member Harrison Wills at 10-under as he chased a fifth-straight Adidas Pro-Am Series.
The next event in the Adidas Pro-Am Series is the Emerald Pro-Am starting Saturday at Emerald Golf Club.
An extraordinary front nine highlighted by an albatross at the par-5 eighth has propelled Sanctuary Cove’s Mitchell Smith to a runaway nine-stroke victory at the GOLFMATE NSW/ACT PGA State Associate Championship.
Seeking to complete a wire-to-wire win at Moruya Golf Club on the New South Wales South Coast, Smith began the fourth and final round with a three-shot buffer, a lead that was reduced to two when Jackson Jubelin (Palm Meadows) opened his round with a birdie.
But after pars at his opening two holes Smith then set about separating himself from the rest of the field, making three straight birdies from the third hole and then holing his second shot from close to 200 metres out at the 468-metre par-5 eighth.
After a front-nine of 6-under 30 and with the chasing pack kept at bay, Smith made 10 pars in succession to complete a round of 6-under 65 – the best of the week – and record a dominant victory with a four-round total of 7-under.
A round of 1-under par 70 was enough for Goulburn’s Luke Humphries to claim outright second at 2-over par with Beau McDonald from Hawks Nest Golf Club finishing at 3-over par after also completing the final round in 1-under 70.
TOURNAMENT RAFFLE RESULTS
1st Place – Graeme Fairchild (1 set of Titleist T200 T-Series Steel Irons *Custom Fitted*)
2nd Place – Phil Chesham (1 Scotty Cameron Putter)
3rd Place – Mark McDougall (1 Riverside Oaks Stay & Play Package for two; including 2 rounds of golf with motorised cart plus 1 nights’ accommodation in a Deluxe Room with Breakfast)
4th Place – Jordan Peters (1 Mid-Week round of golf for 4 including Motorised Carts at Riverside Oaks Golf Resort)
5th Place – Ian Anlezark (1 Titleist Stand Bag)
6th Place – Greg Kable (1 Pair of Footjoy MyJoys)
Where Tim Hart has come from, where he is right now and where he hopes to be in the future are three very different places.
Hart is currently riding a four-event Adidas Pro-Am Series hot streak and returns to Tieri Country Club in Queensland’s Central Highlands region on Thursday as defending champion for the two-day Oaky Creek Coal Tieri Pro-Am.
It’s the stage where the 32-year-old has been dominant for the past two years but he and coach Richard Woodhouse have devised a plan that will take Hart from Tieri in 2021 to the United States within the next 12 months.
Talent has never been Hart’s issue but with a settled personal life and a greater intensity in his application to his game, according to Woodhouse, the timing is now right.
“Players all develop at different rates and mature at different rates as well,” explains Woodhouse, the 2020 PGA National Coach of the Year.
“Tim has always been an incredibly highly-skilled player and athlete and he’s now at a time in his life where he actually owns that a little bit more.
“He now understands that to take the game to the tour level on a repeatable week-in, week-out basis he needs to make himself feel more uncomfortable and put himself in those uncomfortable environments.
“Pro-am golf is really comfortable for him. He knows he can turn up every round and beat everybody.
“He’s had stretches where he’s done stuff that nobody else does in terms of shooting the scores that he produces.
“He’s confident and competent in his ability; the next key is to become competent enough to take that confidence over to an uncomfortable environment.”
How dominant has Hart been on the pro-am scene in the past two years? Consider that he has been the outright or joint winner in 27 pro-ams since February 2019, all the morr remarkable given that he went five months without playing during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020.
His highest world ranking of 657 was achieved in March 2016 and over the years there have been glimpses of Hart transferring his pro-am form to top tier PGA Tour of Australasia tournaments.
In 2016 he finished inside the top three at the Queensland, Victorian and NT PGA championships and earlier this year he was top 20 at the Gippsland Super 6, Vic PGA and TPS Sydney events, rounding out a strong period of play with a tie for seventh at the Golf Challenge NSW Open.
Woodhouse has known for eight years that something special lies within Hart and is more confident than ever that we are about to see the best of it.
“He’s more determined right now than any other time I’ve seen him in his golf career,” says Woodhouse, whose stable also includes Brett Rankin, Daniel Nisbet, Chris Wood and Becky Kay.
“Tim has always been told he’s very good and that he should be winning at a higher level and that can sometimes play on the mind of a player.
“As you get older you mature and you start to discover the best version of yourself. Tim now knows he needs to put more time and more work in to become more competent at the skills he possesses and the areas he’s perhaps not at the standard that he wants to be.
“Like any young players there are always some hurdles that get in the way, whether that be personal, financial or perhaps injuries.
“That’s the beauty of golf. Every player is on their own journey and Tim is in a really good place with his personal well-being right now.
“He now knows more than ever what he wants to achieve.
“And he knows the timeline is right for him right now.”
