Telfer's Thoughts 2.12.25

When you’re ranked the world’s 589th best golfer, it’s a fair bet that hard-nosed Aussie bookies were probably offering odds of about 589 to 1 that a 31-year-old itinerant Kiwi golfer called Nick Voke would win the Australian PGA.

The Aucklander nonetheless probably had a few of those Aussie bookies sweating profusely over the closing hours of the Australian PGA as he stitched together the lowest round of the 4th day, a 5-under 66, which saw him slot home in a tie for third place. Only the eventual winner, David Puig, the LIV golfer from Spain and the young 21-year-old Chinese golfer, Wenyi Ding, did better than Voke over the 4 rounds.

For his consistency and skill at the testing Royal Queensland Golf Club, Nick picked up a cheque worth around NZ$180,000, possibly the biggest pay day he’s had in his 7 years as a pro golfer.

Voke is one of those army of professional golfers who are never quite good enough to nail down a playing card on any of the world’s 2 or 3 leading tours, so they spend their years travelling the world playing minor tours, trying to earn just enough to get them from tournament to tournament. Voke personifies that archetypal trier. He’s played on the Korean Tour, the China Professional Tour, was good enough to get onto the USPGA 2nd tier Tour, the Korn Ferry Tour for a couple of seasons and in recent times his staple bread and butter has been the Australian Challenger series where he had a

win earlier this year.

He was one of about a dozen NZ pros in the field at Royal Queensland. Voke wasn’t the only Kiwi golfer within touching distance of the lead at various times in this A$2,500,000 tournament. Ryan Fox had the lead for most of the first day. Young gun Kazuma Kobori led the field at the halfway stage, but both Fox and Kobori fell away over the closing 36 holes. The Kiwi challenge, however, didn’t dissipate with Fox and Kobori fading. Up stepped Daniel Hillier and Nick Voke. Kiwi golfers for some reason find it hard to succeed in the big Aussie tournaments even though most of them honed their amateur game across the ditch, playing numerous amateur tournaments. So it was nice see a bunch of Kiwis right there in the dog fight, down to the wire, chasing that elusive title. It does show quite clearly what a healthy state our professional game is currently in.

Daniel Hiller is another who deserves a mention. It seems week after week Hillier is there on the first page of the leaderboard, and so it was again in Brisbane, finishing 14 under par for his 72 holes, just 1 shot behind Nick Voke and in a tie for 5th place with Min Woo Lee and Adam Scott - illustrious company indeed. This high finish from Hillier means he’s kicked off the new DP World Tour in a good strong manner as has, for that matter, Kazuma Kobori, who finished in 25th place, slipping out of the top 10 on the last day when he failed to secure as much as even a single birdie and had to wear 4 bogeys on his card. He, like most of the field, really struggled with their ability to get up and down because the putting surfaces were more like glass than greens and trying to stop the ball anywhere near the pin was a thankless task.

Ryan Fox would attest to that too, although he had a bogey-free final round to go with 3 birdies which made up in part for a horror stretch he had on Day 2 when he strung, forgettably, 5 bogeys in a row .

Foxy admitted afterwards that his game was a little rusty, hardly surprising given he hadn’t really touched a golf club for the best part of 2 months.

Playing 4 rounds at Royal Queensland will have removed most, if not all, the rust from that lay-off and he is really eager to get to Melbourne for this week’s Australian Open on one of the world’s best tracks, Royal Melbourne. This strong contingent of Kiwi golfers will again lead the charge to capture this highly sought-after crown, which up until a decade or so ago was considered golf’s 5th Major. It’s still a magnet for many of the game’s best, which is why a guy called Rory McIlroy will be lining up in the strong field.