Victorian Brett Coletta has taken another important step towards promotion to the PGA TOUR in 2020 with a second consecutive top-five finish, tied for fourth at the Pinnacle Bank Championship in Nebraska.

Runner-up a week ago to move into 25th on the Korn Ferry Tour moneylist, Coletta’s tie for fifth advanced him a further three places to 22nd with just three tournaments in the regular season remaining.

The top-25 on the order of merit following the WinCo Foods Portland Open will receive PGA TOUR cards for next year with Coletta’s latest push helped no end by two eagles on the front-9 of his final round on Sunday.

Tied for ninth through 54 holes, Coletta birdied the par-4 2nd and after a slight stumble at the third hit back with eagles at the par-5 4th and 7th holes as he made the turn at 3-under on his round.

He took another step back with a bogey at the 11th but roared home with three birdies in his final five holes for a 5-under 66, one shy of the 65 he shot in the second round to get in contention.

New South Welshman Jamie Arnold is also within reach of a PGA TOUR card after he too finished the week tied for fifth, yet it could have been so much better.

Starting the week 42nd on the moneylist, Arnold caught fire on the front-9 with an eagle and three birdies to turn in 5-under 31 and pressing for a maiden Korn Ferry Tour title.

A bogey at the par-4 11th was countered by back-to-back birdies at 12 and 13 but three dropped shots in the space of just two holes prevented Arnold from climbing even higher than the 31st position he is projected to climb to.

Brett Drewitt’s 3-under 68 moved him up 14 places into a tie for 18th while Kiwi rookie sensation Denzel Ieremia made a strong first impression in his maiden professional appearance in the US to be tied for 22nd.

On the Mackenzie Tour in Canada, Ruben Sondjaja was Australia’s sole representative at the HFX Pro-Am in Halifax, shooting 71 in the final round to finish tied for 66th.

Ryan Fox left Royal Portrush with his own slice of Open Championship history but the 148th hosting will be forever remembered as the Major confirmation of Irishman Shane Lowry.

Ten years after claiming the Irish Open as an exuberant amateur, Lowry again had the home crowd in raptures only this time for the 36 holes of The Open’s finale, using a Saturday 63 to take a five-shot cushion into the final round.

With the massive galleries full of hopeful expectation Lowry began his final 18 holes with a nervous tee shot down the left of the first hole but a bogey putt from some eight feet went a long way to settling his nerves.

A four-shot leader through 54 holes of the 2016 US Open, Lowry was 2-under through seven holes as he extended his advantage to six shots at Royal Portrush and played outstanding links golf in challenging conditions to shoot a 1-over 72 for a six-shot win over Tommy Fleetwood with American Tony Finau a shot further back in third position.

With fellow Irish Major winners Graeme McDowell and Padraig Harrington waiting by the 18th green to welcome the newest member of an exclusive club, Lowry’s reception on his walk up the final fairway will forever retain a special place in Open folklore.

"I hit my tee shot on 18, that was it, and I started to enjoy it then,” Lowry said.

“It was just incredible to walk down 18. The crowd was going wild. I tried to soak it in as much as I could.

"I didn’t even know going out this morning if I was good enough to win a Major. And look, I’m here now, a Major Champion.

“I can’t believe I’m saying it, to be honest."

Fox and Cameron Smith were the only two Australasian players to qualify for the weekend with Fox recording one of the best rounds in atrocious conditions to register his best finish in a major championship, a tie for 16th.

Beginning the final round in a tie for 43rd, Fox was 3-under and bogey-free through 12 holes, dropped shots at 13 and 16 softened somewhat by a birdie at 17.

In what has been an otherwise difficult year since his win at the ISPS HANDA World Super 6 Perth in February, Fox wrote his name into The Open record books when he shot a back-9 of 29 in the opening round, the first player to go sub-30 for nine holes in Open history.

Buoyed by an encouraging performance at the Rocket Mortgage Classic last month, Smith shot to near the top of the leaderboard with a second round of 66 and sat just outside the top-10 prior to the final round.

Three bogeys and a birdie at the par-4 5th saw the Queenslander make the turn in 2-over but as the conditions worsened so too did the scoring, Smith making three straight bogeys from the 15th hole to finish in a tie for 20th.

“That was probably something I haven’t experienced for a while,” Smith said. “It was just brutal.

“It seemed like you couldn’t control your ball no matter how good a strike you had or how good you thought your read was. It was just everywhere.

“It would have been nice to hole a few more putts throughout the week and be right up there, but it is what it is.”

A wild week of weather will likely be the lasting memory after Queenslander Aaron Wilkin finished tied for third at a Guangzhou Open reduced to just 36-holes on the PGA TOUR Series-China.

American Max McGreevy won’t be credited with an official tour victory after he was declared the winner following two completed rounds, the threat of storms on Sunday afternoon forcing organisers to cancel the scheduled third round when play was suspended at 10.39am.

Wilkin began the week with a 5-under 64 at Nansha Golf Club but thunderstorms that drew Wilkin and a number of other Aussies to the roof of the clubhouse to capture the light show were ever-present.

Each day of the tournament was affected by weather in such a way that the second round wasn’t completed until Sunday morning, officials deciding that the combination of time and more wild weather wouldn’t allow for a third to be finished.

Beginning his second round from the 10th tee, Wilkin was struggling on the back of consecutive bogeys at the 15th and 16th holes but got those two shots back in quick time courtesy of an eagle two at the par-4 18th.

Birdies at the third and fourth holes got him to 2-under on his round before a bogey at the sixth hole saw him sign for a 1-under 68 and a two-round total of 132, three shots behind McGreevy in a six-way tie for third.

The result was Wilkin’s best since he was tied for second at the South Pacific Export Radler PNG Open in 2016 and moved him up from 50th to 31st on the Order of Merit.

Sydney’s Kevin Yuan was the next best of the Australians in a tie for 21st with Tim Stewart, James Marchesani and Bryden Macpherson each a further shot back in a tie for 26th.

New South Wales rookie Dylan Perry will be hoping to convert fast starts into another top finish as he continues his maiden season in Japan at this week’s Dunlop SRIXON Fukushima Open at Grandee Nasushirakawa Golf Club in Fukushima.

Perry will be joined in the field by fellow Aussies Anthony Quayle and David Bransdon along with Kiwi Michael Hendry as they each work to improve their position on the Order of Merit two weeks out from the break in the Japan Golf Tour season.

Having earned his card at Q-School in December, Perry has made an immediate impression, the 2017 British Amateur runner-up recording a best finish of tied for eighth at the Token Homemate Open and a tie for 14th at the Gateway to the Open Mizuno Open.

Those results see him placed 41st on the moneylist but the 24-year-old could have been even better placed if he’d capitalised on a number of strong starts.

Perry’s first round on the Japan Tour was a 5-under 66, he was tied for seventh after the first round of The Crowns thanks to a 2-under 68 while at the Mizuno Open he enjoyed a share of the lead following an opening round of 5-under 67.

He leads the tour in rounds per eagle at 2.8 but is 81st in putts per green with an average of 1.8385.

Now in his second year in Japan, Anthony Quayle is the highest on the moneylist of those Aussies playing this week in 29th position, his best result a tie for fifth at The Crowns.

The Gold Coast-based professional is playing this event for the first time while David Bransdon returns for the third consecutive year.

Rookie professional Zach Murray has solidified his position inside the top 10 on the Asian Tour Order of Merit with a tie for 24th at the Kolon Korean Open at the Woo Jeong Hills Country Club.

Thai sensation Jazz Janewattananond leapt Queensland’s Scott Hend to assume top spot on the moneylist with a one-shot win over Korea’s Innchoon Hwang with Murray remaining in sixth position courtesy largely of his win at the New Zealand Open earlier in the year.

Currently ranked 353 in the world, Murray had not finished inside the top-40 of an Asian Tour event since his win at The Hills in February but in a difficult week for scoring the Victorian completed his final 18 holes in even par, a birdie at the 72nd hole a nice way to round out a solid week.

Veteran Terry Pilkadaris went one better than Murray – making birdie at both of the final two holes – to finish tied for 50th while the other six Aussies in the field all failed to make the cut.

Hannah Green is a major champion, just the third woman in Australian history to have the honour.

The 22-year-old from Mt Lawley Golf Club in Perth rolled in a par putt from just inside two metres at Hazeltine National Golf Club just outside Minneapolis today to win the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship by a shot after an epic final day.

She was immediately mobbed on the green by none other than Karrie Webb, the seven-time major champion who has mentored her, and fellow pro Su Oh. Webb, Oh and a bunch of Australians including her boyfriend Jarryd Felton have been staying together in a house locally this week, along with two members of the Webb Scholarship squad, Becky Kay and Grace Kim.

Only two other Aussie women – Webb and Jan Stephenson – have won majors.

Having led the tournament from day one, Green needed to get up and down from the left greenside trap at the par-four 18th to win, because former world No. 1 and defending champion Sung Hyun Park had made a great birdie on the final hole to post eight-under par overall.

But Green hit a terrific trap shot from a delicate spot, leaving herself a right-to-left knee-knocker to win it outright. She buried the putt for her first-ever win on the LPGA Tour, a surprising triumph to many because she was previously winless on the main tour and ranked 114th in the world.

But perhaps it is a sign that she has arrived as a truly world class player. Most of her golfing life, Green has been in the shadow of the other top amateurs who arrived on the national scene with her – WA counterpart Minjee Lee and Victorian Oh. She was a fine amateur, represented her country and won a WA junior title and a Victorian Amateur among other moments, but she was not considered in the class of Lee, who is now the No. 3 player in the world.

Today though, was Hannah Green’s day. It is a monumental triumph for a personable woman who learned her golf watching her Kiwi father Tau, still a keen golfer.

“I mean, I’m pretty much speechless,” Green told the broadcaster afterwards. “I was really nervous playing that last five holes, and I’m happy I made a clutch putt because that was pretty much what was struggling through the round. To get the one at the last is surreal.

“It’s awesome. I mean, I’ve always wanted to win in front of an Aussie crowd, but it felt like even though I’m not in Australia, that was what it was like today. And even just to be winning a major as my first event, I’m just over the moon.’’

Green led from wire-to-wire, shooting 68-69-70-72 to earn a cheque for $US 577,000, giving herself an exemption to play on the main tour for two years and putting herself into the slot to represent Australia at the Olympics in Tokyo next year.

Her three previous wins as a professional were on the secondary Symetra Tour in 2017, when she earned her card to play on the LPGA. Her previous-best finish in an LPGA Tour event was third at the 2018 ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open, and this was just her seventh start in a major.

She had to earn it. Starting out a shot ahead and playing alongside one of the most intimidating players in world golf, Ariya Jutanugarn, she initially charged to a four-shot lead with two early bogeys as the Thai superstar faltered.

But it got messy from the ninth, where she leaked a bogey and at the par-five 11th she was overly aggressive with her wedge to the green and dropped another, then another at the par-four 12th after a poor chip from the front of the green. With Park and Nelly Korda circling, the lead was suddenly only one.

What happened next says it all about the way she played. Green hauled herself together and made three straight pars, then the killer blow, a four-metre downhill birdie at the par-four 16th hole that curled in the left side of the hole, drawing a little fist pump. The pars at the 17th and 18th did the trick for her.

In her most trying moment as a pro, she went one-under par through the last six holes on a course playing long and tough for everybody.

That it happened to be the week that the Webb Scholarship duo were in town was significant, for Green herself was part of that program in 2015, when she stayed with the legendary Australian at a US Women’s Open, picking up tips. The presence of her golf professional boyfriend Jarryd Felton was important, too, for she has struggled with the loneliness of the tour, and Felton has not always been able to be beside her given his own playing commitments.

Webb said she was nervous when Green bogeyed the 9th, but added that her protégé had slept soundly. “We had a loud clap of thunder that shook the house, and she never heard that. I thought that was a good sign that she’d slept really soundly and the nerves hadn’t gotten to her last night. She was quiet this morning, but Hannah’s not a big talker anyway. We were just discussing how great our Aussie barbecue was last night and how much fun she had. It was good that she had a relaxing evening.’’

It promises to be a big party at the Aussie house tonight. And rightly so.

KPMG WOMEN’S PGA CHAMPIONSHIP
-9 Hannah Green (Aus)
-8 Sung Hyun Park (Sth Korea)
-6 Mel Reid (Eng), Nelly Korda (USA)

Stephen Leaney’s Champions Tour credentials have received a further boost after the West Australian used a back-9 birdie blitz to record his best result at the American Family Insurance Championship in Wisconsin.

In a star-studded playoff Jerry Kelly’s birdie at the third extra hole saw him triumph over Retief Goosen and Steve Stricker at University Ridge Golf Club in Madison, Leaney finishing four strokes further back in a tie for eighth.

It is Leaney’s second top-10 finish in his rookie season after he was tied for 10th at the Mitsubishi Electric Classic earlier in the year and he finished it off in style.

Tied for ninth heading into the third and final round, Leaney countered two early birdies with two bogeys to be even par on his round at the turn but then cut loose, the 2003 US Open runner-up rattling off four straight birdies and a fifth at the par-5 16th to climb inside the top-10.

A second consecutive round of even par 72 saw Victorian David McKenzie finish tied for 35th, bogeys at the 13th and 16th holes contributing to a fall of seven spots down the leaderboard.

On the Staysure Tour in Europe, Peter O’Malley shot 76 in the final round of the Farmfoods European Legends Links Championship at Trevose Golf and Country Club in England to finish tied for 24th, Frenchman Jean-Francois Remesy the victor by a shot from Barry Lane.

Greg Turner was the lone Kiwi in the field and finished in 48th position with rounds of 76-78-74.

Champions Tour
American Family Insurance Championship
University Ridge Golf Club, Madison, Wisconsin
T8           Stephen Leaney 69-68-68—205   $US55,000
T35        David McKenzie 68-72-72—212   $11,086

Staysure Tour
Farmfoods European Legends Links Championship
Trevose Golf and Country Club, Padstow, England
T24        Peter O’Malley   69-72-76—217   €1,897
48           Greg Turner        76-78-74—228   €794