Telfer's Thoughts 28.10.25

For some of us, particularly those of a senior age, who play and follow this dear old game, it’s easy to   lament, as I do, the lack of match play at the professional level.

Yes, the amateur game is steeped in match plays, but alas, as soon as you join the professional ranks, it becomes a bit of a historic relic.

Yet oddly enough, often the most riveting of professional competitions are those all too rare match play events.

Take 2025 for example, what has been the best and most riveting golf tournament by far this year? Well of course it was the Ryder Cup. Oddly enough, it’s that head-to-head competition that not only fires up the two players who are never more than a few metres apart for the full round, but that in-your-face rivalry quickly filters down to the nearby crowds, as we saw at Bethpage a few weeks back.

Well last week we had the full spectrum, as it were, of international golf to pick and choose from.

There were two 72-hole stroke play titles on offer, a 54-hole stroke play event and in South Korea, a Women’s International teams match play event comprising eight countries. Of the four events, the one I found most interesting was the LPGA event in Korea - a match play knockout event which featured Lydia Ko.

The format here bore some resemblance to the Ryder Cup, but instead of two countries or teams going head-to-head, this one involved eight, split initially into two pools of four. The eight teams comprised seven countries with four players in each team and a World team headed by Lydia Ko and Canadian, Brooke Henderson. The World team, a little surprisingly, were seeded only seventh of the eight teams competing.

With Ko, Henderson and Englishwoman Charley Hull in their team they proved a tough nut to crack. The World team topped their pool and, in their semi-final, met a powerful Australian side. They were tied at the end of 18 holes in the last match, so a sudden death play-off ensued.  It was won by Australia who went on to play the USA in the final which comprised two singles matches and one fourball match. The Aussie four of Minjee Lee, Grace Kim, Hannah Green, all winners on the LPGA, along with newcomer, 24-year-old Stephanie Kyriacou, a two-time winner on the European Tour, were too strong for the Americans, winning both singles matches and tying the fourball. Lydia Ko and her World team beat Japan 2-1 in the play-off for third place.

Overall, this match play event was a welcome change from the regular week-in week-out 72-hole stroke play events. I just hope the men who run the USPGA Tour take notice of how refreshing an international teams’ match play event can be for a Tour dominated by 72-hole stroke play events.

One tour that breaks away from the 72-hole tradition is the USPGA Seniors Tour and last week the Simmions Bank Championship in Florida was a 54-hole affair, won in spectacular and historic fashion by Steve Alker. He won by 7 shots from Aussie Richard Green. Steve’s 54-hole total of 197, 20 under par, was the lowest 54-hole score so far this year on this Tour. He picked up over half a million NZ dollars for his efforts and jumps from 4^th place to 1^st on the Charles Schwab Cup points list. Only the top 36 at season’s end qualify for the rich end-of-season Schwab Cup.

The highlight of his final round was an eagle from the fairway on the par 5 10^th hole.

Meanwhile the men’s DP World Tour was in Korea last week for the Genesis Championship at the Woo Jeong Hills Country Club in Cheonan. It wasn’t exactly a happy hunting ground for the two Kiwis. Kazuma Kobori missed the cut, albeit by only 1 shot, and Daniel Hillier is probably going to spend this week on a psychologist’s couch in the hope of finding out why he has plummeted spectacularly down the leaderboard twice over the last two weeks. Last week in Spain he led the field going into the last round only for his game to self-implode which saw him finish up near the bottom of the field. This week he had a share of the lead after 36 holes, then the disasters of the previous week revisited him. After opening his 3^rd round with a birdie, everything seemed on target until he got to the 5^th where he dropped a shot, then came a double bogey on the par 3 7^th and yet another double on the par 4 11^th , followed by a bogey on the 17^th to finally finish up with a 7-over 78 and so he went from 1^st to 53^rd in the space of 12 holes.

Thankfully he rediscovered his game on Day 4, putting together a tidy 3-under 68 to work his way up from 53^rd to 38^th place overall.

But the shrink’s couch, I suspect, rather than the practice fairway might be his first call this week.