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The PGA of Australia will postpone all sanctioned events from Friday as a precautionary measure to help tackle the spread of the coronavirus.
Events such as Ladbrokes Pro-Am Series, Ladbrokes Legends Tour, Volkswagen Scramble Regional Finals, and PGA Trainee and Open matches played from Friday 20 March until Friday 1 May are set to be rescheduled later in the year.
It follows the postponement of the Morobe Open and Papua New Guinea Open, which form part of the Ladbrokes Pro-Am Series and ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia respectively.
“The health and safety of our Members and stakeholders is at the forefront of everything we do,” said Gavin Kirkman, chief executive of the PGA of Australia.
“We are dealing with unprecedented events worldwide and this measure is a much-needed approach to ensure we are playing our part in flattening the Coronavirus curve.
“We will continue to take the advice of the Australian Government and leading health authorities to decrease the rate of transmission, which will ultimately free up the valuable resources at hospitals and health centres so frontline support staff can appropriately manage the crisis.”
The PGA – guided by the expertise of the Australian Government and leading health authorities – will continue to monitor the situation closely and will communicate any future changes.
The PGA of Australia will postpone the Morobe Open and Papua New Guinea Open as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.
The two events, staged on the Ladbrokes Pro-Am Series and ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia respectively, were set to be played in April and May, but are likely to be rescheduled later in the year.
The decision has been made in the wake of the World Health Organization officially declaring the virus a global pandemic.
The PGA of Australia’s Tournaments Director Australasia, Nick Dastey, says the safety of the golfers, volunteers and stakeholders was paramount to the decision.
“While it’s disappointing to postpone any event, the health and safety of our players, members, staff and volunteers is always our top priority,” Dastey said.
“As infection rates in Australia continue to increase, the PGA is working closely with health authorities and government bodies to ensure we adopt the safest practices to protect all those involved in putting together our golf events.
“We’re currently in discussions with all stakeholders to determine a revised date for the event later in the year. We will continue to review our position in light of the latest information from subject-matter experts.”
Adam Scott has hit 702 golf shots in competition on the PGA TOUR in 2020 and hasn’t looked at a single one of them.
OK, he may have snuck a peek at his daring up-and-down at the 15th at Riviera that helped to propel him to a two-shot win at the Genesis Invitational but when it comes to dissecting one of the most admired swings in world golf, Scott prefers the ‘less is more’ approach.
Back at TPC Sawgrass for the 19th consecutive year, the 2004 champion of THE PLAYERS Championship is confident of where his swing – and hence his game – is situated.
A slow start last week at Bay Hill led to a missed cut last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational but the 39-year-old has kept up his practice of trusting coach Brad Malone that his body is in the position it needs to be to produce displays of premium ball-striking.
“I got in the habit of watching my swing on video, which isn’t good because even though the swing can be good you can nitpick every swing,” Scott said ahead of the opening round of THE PLAYERS.
“The perfect swing pretty much doesn’t exist. And even when I’m swinging good I could see something and try and then go and work on it.
“Basically, I haven’t seen my swing this year at all and so a lot of it is based off feel.
“I trust my coach that he’s telling me the swing is looking in a good spot and then I just find my own feels to play golf.
“That keeps the freedom and kind of the natural talent I have for playing as open as possible to come out on the course. That’s kind of my process.
“There are times to reference off TrackMan and all the other information but at this point I don’t think there’s many secrets I’m going to find from it.
“I know my game fairly well and I’m fairly honest with myself about how the ball flight is.”
As he nears his 40th birthday, Scott is now among the more experienced players on tour trying to keep up with confident kids such as Viktor Hovland, Matthew Wolff and Collin Morikawa.
Teeing it up in rounds one and two of THE PLAYERS alongside Justin Rose and Xander Schauffele, Scott senses a time to strike rather than take a step back.
“It’s an interesting time for me to compete,” said Scott, whose Genesis Invitational win came in his first start since his Australian PGA Championship triumph in December.
“I feel like I have a great opportunity at the moment to achieve some of the things that I have set out to do.
“Coming off the back of a year (in 2018) not playing as well as I hoped, when these opportunities present themselves you want to take advantage of them.
“I’m excited for that. I’m not really trying to prove that I can beat any of the young guys, but I think some of the old guys still have it out here.”
With the first round now complete, Scott recovered from two front-nine bogeys with an impressive five birdies and a lone bogey on the back-nine to enter the clubhouse 2-under and tied for 37th. Marc Leishman leads the Australian contingent at 5-under ahead of round two.
With no finish worse than a tie for 12th in his past four visits to the Stadium Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Scott remains as one of the best chances of the six Aussies in the field as Jason Day continues to battle a back injury.
Steve Elkington (1991, 1997) is the only Australian to win twice at TPC Sawgrass and Scott sees no reason why he can’t emulate the feat.
“I had a bit of a bad front nine at Arnold Palmer, which is disappointing, however, the silver lining may be that I didn’t have to deal with that golf course over the weekend,” Scott said.
“That looked quite brutal and my mind is in a good place because of that.
“I feel very comfortable with where my game’s at.
“The lesson learned out of last week was I need to just make sure I’m prepared teeing off and not have that kind of slow start to take away from the level where my game is and put myself back in with a chance to win a big tournament this week.”
Former PGA TOUR winner and Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee has urged Jason Day to look at the longevity of sporting icons Roger Federer and Tom Brady in order to avoid the back injury currently plaguing him from ending his career prematurely.
Speaking ahead of this week’s THE PLAYERS Championship where Day is one of six Australians in the field, in typically abrupt fashion Chamblee didn’t hold back when asked to assess the ongoing back issues that forced Day to withdraw early in the second round of last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.
Choosing to walk nine holes of Pete Dye’s famed Stadium Course layout on Monday rather than subject his back to any unnecessary stress, Day was the fourth Australian winner of THE PLAYERS when he triumphed in 2016 but Chamblee has grave concerns that the 32-year-old Queenslander will have many more opportunities to add a second.
“You know, if you’ve got a short, quick golf swing, you’re going to have a short, quick career. Especially if you’ve got a violent transition the way he’s had,” Chamblee said.
“He had a wonderful run in his 20s, nice run through his early 30s, but I can remember a point where he got up and said he was trying to shorten his golf swing.
“I thought, That’s the exact opposite thing you need to be doing. Just go back and look at people with short, quick golf swings and you tell me which one of them had a wonderful extended career, from Doug Sanders to Nick Price.
“They were brilliant players, but they’re not Sam Snead, they’re not Julius Boros, they’re not Phil Mickelson.
“I don’t know that the calamity is irreversible, but it might be.”
In addition to the new regime implemented by world No.1 and defending champion Rory McIlroy, Chamblee suggested the extraordinary careers of Federer and NFL legend Brady could provide an insight to Day extending his career well into his 40s.
Federer is currently in his 23rd year as a tennis professional while six-time Super Bowl MVP Brady made his NFL debut in 2000 but Chamblee said Day need only look down the range to address the stress his swing is placing on his body.
“I don’t know if Rory talked about Whoop, the thing that he has under his arm. You can’t even see it,” said Chamblee, whose best finish in nine starts at THE PLAYERS was a tie for 42nd.
“He has a device under his arm that looks like a wrist watch. That Whoop measures the amount of stress that you’re under every single day, practising, training and it impresses upon you recovery and it impresses upon you the importance of sleep.
“When I would hear Jason Day talk about all the sacrifices he needed to make in the gym and practising, I never really heard him pay proper attention to recovery.
“One of the great things we’re seeing with Rory is this thing that’s under his arm, we’re learning from Brady and we’re learning from Federer how to extend your career.
“Rory in his late 20s, early 30s, when you think you’re physiologically bulletproof, he has learned from them and I think Jason Day could learn from Rory and Federer and Brady.”
Round 1 tee times AEDT
US PGA TOUR
THE PLAYERS Championship
TPC Sawgrass, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
11.02pm Aaron Baddeley, Scott Stallings, Michael Thompson
12.08am* Marc Leishman, JT Poston, Francesco Molinari
12.30am Danny Lee, Ryan Moore, Abraham Ancer
3.56am* Matt Jones, Adam Schenk, Jazz Janewattananond
4.18am* Cameron Smith, Keegan Bradley, Ian Poulter
4.40am Adam Scott, Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele
5.24am Jason Day, Kevin Na, Patton Kizzire
Defending champion: Rory McIlroy
Past Australian champions: Steve Elkington (1991, 1997), Greg Norman (1994), Adam Scott (2004), Jason Day (2016)
Top Aussie prediction: Marc Leishman
TV schedule: Live Friday 4am-10am, Saturday 4am-10am, Sunday 5am-10am, Monday 4am-9am on Fox Sports 503.
The short-term playing opportunities of some of Australia’s leading professionals are in doubt as concerns surrounding the coronavirus continue to impact world golf tours.
After 13 Aussies took part in last week’s Bandar Malaysia Open in Kuala Lumpur the Asian Tour confirmed on Monday that the Bangabandhu Cup Golf Open due to be played in Dhaka, Bangladesh from March 25-28 will be postponed to a later date, joining this week’s Royal’s Cup in Thailand as early casualties on the Asian Tour schedule.
“Several new cases of COVID-19 have recently been discovered in Dhaka and travel restrictions are being imposed on incoming and outgoing travellers for the immediate future to prevent further spread of the virus,” the Asian Tour said in a statement.
“In view of this global outbreak, a request has been made by the Bangladesh Golf Federation (BGF) to postpone the event and we have also decided that it is in the best interest of all the players, staff and officials to postpone the event.”
Co-sanctioned with the European Tour, next week’s Hero Indian Open at the DLF Golf and Country Club in New Delhi was officially postponed late on Wednesday night, the European Tour confirming what many Aussie players had already feared.
India is presently not allowing incoming passengers from Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea and foreign nationals who have travelled to China, Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea on or after February 1 are also being denied entry. That adds to the continuing ban on Chinese nationals from entering India, European Tour citing those restrictions as the reason for the postponement until later in the year.
“In these difficult global circumstances, we fully understand and appreciate the recent restrictions introduced in respect of travel into India,” Pelley said in a statement released by the European Tour.
“As these new measures now prevent many members of both Tours being able to play in the tournament, everyone involved in the staging of the Hero Indian Open felt it was the correct decision to postpone the tournament.”
Aussies who were initially on the entry list to play in India Scott Hend (who was unlikely to play due to illness), Wade Ormsby, Andrew Dodt, Maverick Antcliff, Daniel Nisbet, Terry Pilkadaris, David Gleeson and Kiwi Ryan Fox and when they will play next remains uncertain.
The European Tour had already postponed three events due to coronavirus fears prior to delaying the Indian Open. This week’s Magical Kenya Open was postponed last Friday while the Maybank Malaysia and Volvo China Open tournaments scheduled for back-to-back weeks after the Masters have also been put on hold.
Omega Dubai Desert Classic champion Lucas Herbert is not expecting to play until the US PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco from May 14 while Zach Murray could face an even lengthier layoff.
Due to open their season on April 16 with the Token Homemate Cup – where Canberran Brendan Jones is due to defend – there are doubts also that the Japan Golf Tour will be able to commence as scheduled. On Tuesday Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league announced that they had delayed the start to their season to help stop the spread of the virus, unable to confirm when it would begin as the country tries to prevent any addition to the 485 documented cases and 14 deaths to date.
Scheduled to begin in late March, the PGA TOUR has postponed two qualifying events for the PGA TOUR-China series along with the first four events of the season, a shortened season now unlikely to begin until late May or early June.
Although some sports in the United States have begun to put measures in place to deal with any outbreak, the PGA TOUR itself has yet to experience any disruption.
Speaking on the Golf Channel and preparing for The Players at TPC Sawgrass this week, Arnold Palmer Invitational runner-up Marc Leishman said all players could do was to take care of their own personal health.
“You’ve just got to try and take all measures to avoid getting it,” Leishman said.
“If you live your life to avoid the flu I feel like you’re going to have a pretty miserable life. If you live your life trying to avoid the coronavirus I think it’s going to be pretty similar.
“So you don’t want to go doing that but I think it could potentially affect things.
“It’s pretty scary what’s happening at the moment.”
Australia’s leading female players have also been affected with the likes of Minjee Lee, Hannah Green, Su Oh, Katherine Kirk and Sarah Kemp denied starts due to the cancellation of three events in Asia. The Honda LPGA Thailand, the HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore and the Blue Bay LPGA which was set to take place March 5-8 in China have all been cancelled but the LPGA expects the Volvik Founders Cup in Phoenix to go ahead as planned.
Tournaments postponed/cancelled to date
Asian Tour
Royal’s Cup, Thailand
Bangabandhu Cup Golf Open, Bangladesh
European Tour
Magical Kenya Open, Kenya
Maybank Malaysia, Malaysia
Volvo China Open, China
LPGA Tour
Honda LPGA Thailand, Thailand
HSBC Women’s World Championship, Singapore
Blue Bay LPGA, China
PGA TOUR Series-China
Qualifying events and first four tournaments postponed. Shortened season planned to begin late May/early June.
Marc Leishman has vowed to use a Bay Hill near miss to correct his sub-par record at THE PLAYERS and push on towards a maiden major breakthrough.
In conditions more reminiscent of a major championship test and wind and firmness all too familiar for someone who grew up playing on Melbourne’s sandbelt, Leishman pushed Englishman Tyrrell Hatton all the way to the 72nd hole before ultimately coming up one shot short.
Winner at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in 2017, Leishman was named as one of three 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational ambassadors prior to the start of the tournament and revelled in the difficult scoring conditions.
Matthew Fitzpatrick was the only player across the final 36 holes to break 70 but Leishman hung tough, fighting back from three shots down to draw within one of Hatton with six holes to play.
A dropped shot at the par-3 14th when Leishman missed the green right was countered by a birdie at the par-5 16th but Hatton held his nerve under immense pressure, claiming a one-shot win and his first PGA TOUR title.
Without a finish inside the top 60 at TPC Sawgrass since he was tied for 24th in 2015, Leishman is aware of his record at THE PLAYERS but will head to Ponte Vedra Beach buoyed by his Bay Hill showing.
“Obviously anytime you have a chance to win you want to pull it off and win. You don’t get too many chances,” Leishman said following his final round of 1-over 73.
“So, yes, I’m disappointed, but I’m happy I played well.
“It felt like a US Open out there. Fast greens, long rough, narrow fairways, and big crowd, big vocal crowds. It was a lot of fun.
“Obviously, I would have liked to have won but that was a fun day, a fun week.
“Going into the PLAYERS next week in a good place mentally and with the major season coming up as well so going to take some positives out of this.
“Happy to put four pretty good rounds together and try and do the same thing at PLAYERS next week.
“I think I’m due for a good week there. That’s why I’m going there. But my game’s in a good spot.
“I feel great with the putter. Hoping next week can be my week there.
“I’ve only had one top 10 there in 10 or 11 events so it hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for me, but we’ll try and change that.”
Kiwi Danny Lee recorded his best result since he was second at the CJ Cup at Nine Bridges in Korea last year, his fifth-place finish elevating him back inside the top 100 in the world, but it was a difficult day for Matt Jones. The New South Welshman dropped from the top 10 to a tie for 47th with a 9-over 81 including four dropped shots in his final three holes.
There is also concern for Jason Day who was forced to withdraw early in the second round with a recurrence of his back injury while Adam Scott missed the cut.
Jason Scrivener was the only Aussie to qualify for the weekend at the European Tour’s Commercial Bank Qatar Masters and made a late charge with one of the best rounds of the final day.
Starting Sunday tied for 57th, Scrivener’s six birdies and round of 5-under 66 was bettered by only two players and resulted in a move up to 21st as Spain’s Jorge Campillo outlasted David Drysdale to claim victory at the fifth playoff hole at Education City Golf Club.
As Presidents Cup captain Ernie Els logged his first win on the Champions Tour Victorian David McKenzie registered his best result of the year, three straight rounds of 68 earning a share of 10th at the Hoag Classic at Newport Country Club in California.
PGA TOUR
Arnold Palmer Invitational
Bay Hill Club and Lodge, Orlando, Florida
T2 Marc Leishman 71-69-72-73—285 $US1,013,700
T5 Danny Lee 71-67-75-75—288 $330,731
T47 Matt Jones 75-68-73-81—297 $25,054
MC Adam Scott 77-72—149
WD Jason Day 74
Champions Tour
Hoag Classic
Newport Beach Country Club, Newport Beach, California
T10 David McKenzie 68-68-68—204 $US43,200
T36 Stephen Leaney 71-68-71—210 $9,566
T60 Rod Pampling 71-72-73—216 $2,970
European Tour
Commercial Bank Qatar Masters
Education City GC, Doha, Qatar
T21 Jason Scrivener 70-71-70-66—277 €16,606
MC Maverick Antcliff 70-72—142
MC Jake McLeod 70-72—142
MC Min Woo Lee 72-71—143
WD Scott Hend 73
PGA TOUR-Latinoamerica
Estrella del Mar Open
Estrella del Mar Golf and Beach, Mazatlan, Mexico
T28 Danny List 67-67-68-70—272
T35 James Anstiss 67-67-68-71—273
A late double-bogey has proved costly as Queensland’s Andrew Dodt was unable to complete a wire-to-wire win at the Asian Tour’s Bandar Malaysia Open in Kuala Lumpur.
At the top of the leaderboard since posting a 9-under par round of 63 in Round 1, Dodt started Sunday’s final round with a one-shot buffer, the tournament reduced to 54 holes due to repeated weather delays on Friday and Saturday.
That lead stretched to three when Dodt birdied the opening two holes of his third round but after registering his first bogey of the week at the par-3 fourth began to wobble midway through the back nine.
He made bogey at the 419-metre par-4 13th when he failed to get up-and-down but it was the par-4 15th that saw Dodt drop from the lead with just three holes to play.
Out of position in the trees to the right of the fairway, Dodt was forced to punch out to the safety of the fairway with his second, a three-putt once on the green in three resulting in a costly double bogey and a one-shot deficit.
Showing tremendous mental strength, that deficit was wiped clean with a birdie at the par-4 16th and he narrowly missed having a one-shot lead heading to the final hole when his birdie putt at the par-3 17th hole took a chunk of the left edge of the cup before spinning out.
Par the par-5 18th earned a spot in the three-man playoff, Dodt matching Trevor Simsby’s birdie with a clutch putt from 10 feet at the opening playoff hole as American Jarin Todd dropped out.
Simsby set up another great look at birdie with a second shot to the apron fronting the green and Dodt was unable to get up-and-down after laying up in the fairway, his 16-footer sliding past the right edge as Simsby claimed his maiden Asian Tour title with a birdie putt from five feet rammed into the back of the hole.
“It was a good week. Just disappointed to finish it like that but all in all, it’s still a solid week,” Dodt told Asian Tour Media following the playoff.
“Thinking back about the double-bogey on 15, I made a good bounce-back with a birdie on 16. The birdie on 17th was also quite possible but didn’t make it.
“I tried to be aggressive out there today. It just got really hard on the back nine, mentally and physically. Still a lot of positives to take from this week.”
As Dodt moved up to sixth on the Asian Tour Order of Merit with his runner-up finish, Wade Ormsby maintained his position at the top with a tie for 10th while Queensland amateur Lawry Flynn gave an indication of what’s to come in his professional career with a tie for 16th.
Playing in just his fourth professional tournament outside his home state, Flynn was 5-under through his first 12 holes and then recorded back-to-back eagles in a second round of 6-under 66, rounding out his week with a 1-under 71 that – like Thursday – featured a run of three straight birdies from 10-12.
Asian Tour
Bandar Malaysia Open
Kota Permai Golf & Country Club, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Event reduced to 54 holes due to rain
T2* Andrew Dodt 63-68-72—203 $US86,500
T10 Wade Ormsby 71-65-70—206 $17,600
T16 Lawry Flynn (a) 71-66-71—208 ——–
T38 Josh Younger 67-74-70—211 $6,038
T38 Jake Higginbottom 69-73-69—211 $6,038
T47 Travis Smyth 70-73-69—212 $4,800
T58 Terry Pilkadaris 71-71-72—214 $3,150
MC Marcus Fraser 74-70—144
MC Daniel Fox 73-72—145
MC Will Heffernan 70-75—145
MC Adam Blyth 74-72—146
MC Scott Strange 77-74—151
MC Ben Eccles 76-75—151
* Lost on second hole of sudden-death playoff
A strong showing in New Zealand and a course that plays to his strengths has Wade Ormsby confident of extending his status as the Asian Tour No.1 at this week’s Bandar Malaysia Open in Kuala Lumpur.
Last contested in 2015, the Malaysia Open makes a welcome return to the Asian Tour schedule with a trophy featuring many former Australian greats.
Frank Phillips, Bill Dunk, Graham Marsh, Stewart Ginn, Brian Jones and Terry Gale are all former Malaysia Open champions, Gale’s third title in 1987 the last by an Australian.
Winner of the season-opening Hong Kong Open, Ormsby missed three cuts in his next four events but a tie for seventh at last week’s New Zealand Open in Queenstown – including a superb final round of 5-under 66 – has the South Australian poised to build on his current position at the top of the Asian Tour moneylist.
“It’s been a nice start to the year for me,” Ormsby told Asian Tour Media.
“Obviously, I had a great week in Hong Kong but didn’t play so well after that. It was a good return to form last week in New Zealand and I’m feeling good coming to Malaysia this week.
“It’s absolutely fantastic to have the Malaysian Open back on the schedule. It’s a great event. Seeing the trophy when we drove in this morning and seeing so many big names on it, it just feels great to be playing in such a storied event which has been around for a long time.”
The talk among players leading up to Thursday’s opening round is the firmness of the greens at Kota Permai Golf and Country Club.
Kota Permai last hosted the Malaysia Open in 2008 and Ormsby likes the way it sets up for his game.
“It’s always nice coming to play in Kuala Lumpur,” said Ormsby, who with $US209,403 in prizemoney is just over $96,000 ahead of Thailand superstar Jazz Janewattananond on the Order of Merit.
“We’ve played a lot of golf courses here and this week’s course is in great condition.
“You need to be sharp around the greens here. The course is actually not quite long which sets up well for me so I’ll just go about my business and see how it goes.
“You’ve just got to keep the ball in play.”
Ormsby is one of 13 Australians in the field this week including Malaysia Amateur champion Lawry Flynn, the Queensland left-hander playing in just his fourth professional event outside his home state. It also represents the second event of the year for Q School graduate Will Heffernan who will be eager to make a strong impression.
As the Asian Tour season resumes the impact of the coronavirus looms large, the prospect of condensing the schedule a very real possibility.
The European Tour has already made the decision to postpone both the Maybank Championship in Malaysia and the Volvo China Open scheduled for April but veteran Aussie Marcus Fraser told the PGA of Australia that he never considered skipping this week’s event, admitting that the effect the outbreak is having was noticeable in transit.
“It’s definitely quiet up here,” said Fraser.
“I travelled through Singapore Airport and it was a lot quieter than normal.”
Adam Blyth is the first of the Aussies in action in Round 1, teeing off at 11am AEDT. The other Australians playing the Malaysia Open are Scott Strange, Terry Pilkadaris, Travis Smyth, Daniel Fox, Ben Eccles, Jake Higginbottom, Andrew Dodt and Josh Younger.
It took a keen eye to spot him.
Mingling with mothers and fathers brought together from all corners of south-east Queensland, Brad Kennedy was just another dance dad supporting his two daughters in two days of competition on the Sunshine Coast in June last year.
It’s the life he longs for yet right now Kennedy has never featured higher within the ranks of professional golf.
On the back of his second New Zealand Open title on Sunday that was the culmination of a three-week stretch with equal measures of heartache and triumph, Kennedy sits just one place outside the top 100 golfers on the planet.
It’s a career-high position and makes him the seventh-highest ranked Australian in the Official World Golf Rankings – not to mention his ongoing standing as the No.1 Kennedy in men’s golf. (There are six in total.)
It’s enough to reconsider his plans to walk away from pro golf at the end of 2020 and perhaps even stake a claim to represent Australia at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
A regular on the Japan Golf Tour since 2011, Kennedy knows he could be a beneficiary of the coronavirus outbreak concern should the Olympics go ahead in late July.
Fears over what the Zika virus could do the immune system of his wife led Marc Leishman to skip the Rio de Janiero Olympics in 2016 and four years on he and other Aussies prominent in the world rankings will have cause to consider their eligibility.
For Kennedy, it would represent an opportunity as far removed from his own reality as he could have imagined only a month or so ago.
“A few months ago I got an email from the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to say I am fourth reserve for the Olympics,” Kennedy explained.
“I thought, I’m 45 – I don’t go to the Olympics.
“Things can change so quickly. With this virus guys will pull out so I may be playing in the Olympics in four months’ time. You just never know in this game and that is why we love it and why it can destroy us.”
At 45 years of age the Gold Coast-based Kennedy knows the cruelty that professional golf can inflict all too well, yet nothing may compare to the emotional roller-coaster he has been riding the past three weeks on the PGA Tour of Australasia.
For 71 holes – which included playing the first 18 in just 61 shots – Kennedy was a class above at the Coca-Cola Queensland PGA Championship when all broke loose.
He was informed of a scoring error while walking down the 18th hole and now needing just a par to win chose to lay up from the trees left of the fairway.
After playing his third to 25 feet from the hole left his first putt three feet short and then missed the next, missing the playoff entirely with a double-bogey six.
He was left to rue a third-round 75 when he missed the Isuzu Queensland Open playoff by two shots a week later and then dusted himself off again for one of the most popular weeks among players all year in Queenstown.
Victor at Clearwater Golf Club in 2011, Kennedy’s final round of 8-under 63 at The Hills on Sunday secured a two-shot win and once again he had his wife and two daughters to thank for it.
“My wife picked me up and just told me to get back out there and keep going,” Kennedy said of his Queensland PGA disappointment.
“I had my wife caddying for me and I had my kids there and I was trying to have a real family experience, plus it would be the last time they would see me play golf there.
“I just want to be home with the kids – stay at home and watch them grow up.
“I was looking to hang the boots up at the end of this year. I’ve been doing it for 25 years and just really wanted to make this year a really positive year to end.
“I’ve sacrificed a lot, but also my family has sacrificed a lot too.
“I’ve been pretty selfish over the last 15, 20 years playing the game and it just feels now is a good time to get back and watch my girls grow up and spend some time at home.
“The oldest is 13 and youngest is eight. To see them grow up through their careers… Money is not an object – I would quite happily sit home and watch them and guide them through their careers.
“I miss a lot of events they are in so as a life experience I would like to go through that.”
Perhaps a chance to represent Australia in a country that has been such a significant part of his professional journey would be a rather fitting finale.
Rodger Davis’s 17-year reign as the most recent Aussie winner on the Champions Tour remains intact after Rod Pampling succumbed to a red-hot Bernhard Langer in the closing stages of the Cologuard Classic in Arizona.
Three shots back of 36-hole leader Brett Quigley when the final round began, Pampling roared into contention with a front nine of 4-under 32.
He claimed a share of the lead with a fifth birdie at the par-4 10th and was on track to record an Australian victory on the US seniors tour for the first time since Davis triumphed at the 2003 Toshiba Senior Classic.
A three-time winner on the PGA TOUR and in just his sixth start as a member of the 50-plus brigade, Pampling was joined by playing partner Langer at 16-under at the par-4 11th but couldn’t keep pace over the closing holes.
Failure to get up-and-down from the bunker led to a bogey at 14 and a three-putt at the par-3 16th led to a second dropped shot, Pampling finishing tied for third four shots adrift of Langer who recorded his 116th professional win and now has a win in each of the past six decades.
“I was paired with Rod Pampling and he was pushing me,” Langer said post-round.
“He was ahead of me, then I got level, then I got ahead, then he pushed ahead again.
“That was probably good for me, to not let up whatsoever.”
It is not only Pampling with an eye on breaking Australia’s Champions Tour drought with Stephen Leaney recording a bogey-free 4-under 69 to finish tied for ninth with David McKenzie rounding out his tournament with a 1-over 74 to be tied for 65th.
Cologuard Classic
Omni Tucson National, Tucson, Arizona
T3 Rod Pampling 67-68-70—205 $US112,200
T9 Stephen Leaney 69-70-69—208 $36,975
T65 David McKenzie 75-72-74—221 $2,125
