In winning last Sunday’s Heritage Classic, James and Steve – the 1995 Singapore Open champion – have become the first father-son duo to win on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia since its establishment in 1973.

Fathers and sons to have both played on Tour is rare – David and Charlie Smail played the 2019 New Zealand Open – and winners globally are few and far between.

They are not the first Australian father-son duo to win on a major tour – Joe Kirkwood Snr and Joe Kirkwood Jnr were the third to do so on the PGA TOUR when Joe Jnr won the 1949 Philadelphia Inquirer Open.

Having grown up in the locker rooms of golf tournaments throughout Australia and Japan, James was thrilled to create a slice of history alongside his father.

“It’s pretty cool now that I think about it,” said James ahead of the final event of the season, The National Tournament starting Thursday.

“I never really realised growing up how highly ranked in the world rankings and stuff Dad was. I never really thought about it too much.

“Now that I’m a bit older, I can see what he accomplished so it means a bit more now.

“I remember going to Aussie Opens, Aussie Masters, Aussie PGA, they’d send me into the creche and I’d be crying. I wanted to go watch the golf with them.

“I just remember going to tournaments when I was a little kid and being around all the golfers in the locker room and stuff. It was pretty cool.”

A silky player who spent almost 20 years on the Japan Golf Tour, Steve Conran won the KBC Augusta tournament in 2004 and accumulated career prize money of ¥471,023,313 (approx. $4.984m).

With his 59th birthday approaching in May, Conran has been a prolific winner on the PGA Legends Tour. He also has the occasional win over his 26-year-old son.

“I still go home now and he’s 60 years old and he is still beating me up, so that’s not very good,” James laughed.

“The most I’ve learned from him is probably how to score a golf course. Course management and just hitting it to the correct spots.

“You hear it all the time, course management, but I’ve grown up watching how he did it.

“He’s not the longest hitter but he would just shoot 2-under, 3-under every day and it added up over the week.

“That’s what I’m trying to get a bit better at the moment. I can have those 5, 6, 7-under rounds, but I have too many of the 1, 2, 3-over rounds at the moment.

“That’s what I’ve learned the most from him, how to score a golf course.”

Leading by three strokes with nine holes to play at the PNG Open before being run down by Will Bruyeres, Conran is now 16th on the Order of Merit and with playing rights secured for the next two seasons.

Thirty years after his dad’s win in Singapore, James now knows what winning on Tour represents.

“It was a cool feeling just seeing the messages on my phone,” said James.

“I had over 200 messages to reply to and that was 10 minutes after I finished.

“It’s cool to know that everyone was watching and supporting.”

The National Tournament tees off at 8:10am Thursday. The final two rounds are broadcast live on Fox Sports and Kayo from 3pm Saturday and 1pm Sunday AEDT.

Photos: Dan Pockett (James Conran), Darren England/ALLSPORT (Steve Conran)