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The lot of young professional golfers, especially from these parts these days, as they endeavour to secure a spot on any of the world‘s leading tours, usually entails an enormous amount of travel. Scanning the widely various global locations our leading players were in last week underlies the itinerant nature of this sport. We had Kazuma Kobori, our newest addition to the men’s professional ranks, playing in the Kenya Open in Nairobi; Ryan Fox was in Mexico, the latest stop on the USPGA Tour; Nic Voke was making a very successful fist of things winning the latest tournament on the Australasian Tour; Momoka Kobori, Kazuma’s older sister, is playing on the European Ladies Tour; Lydia Ko and Fiona Xu, the NZ pair competing on the USLPGA tour which is currently playing a series of its events in Asia; Daniel Hillier, like Kobori, a regular now on the DP World Tour, has spent the last 3 weeks competing in the Middle East but is now in Queenstown playing the NZ Open before returning to the DP World Tour which heads to South Africa for the next couple of weeks then off to Singapore Tour. I guess if you’re a member of this Tour, like Kobori and Hillier, and even if you’re not making a lot of money, you are certainly clocking up a lot of air miles. None of these players, incidentally, have any of their travel paid. Air fares, accommodation and any other costs incurred getting yourself and your clubs from one tournament to the next are your costs. There are no free lunches in the world of professional golf. Sure, your potential earnings can be enormous, but it is also a costly business which is why there is such a high turnover rate. If your game isn’t up to scratch, you will run out of money quickly. Certainly many promising youngsters initially attract sponsorship in their rookie years, but if your game and standing is going backwards, your days as a touring pro are usually numbered. There has of course been one glaring exception to the above scenario - who else but Tiger Woods. So sensational was his game, even while he was ateenager yet still an amateur, that Nike offered him a US$1million contract the day he turned pro. So even before he had hit his first ball as a pro, he was a golfing millionaire. Meanwhile back in the real world, the tough grind of life as a touring pro continued for our group of leading Kiwi pros. Not too many of them were in action last week. Ryan Fox’s Mexican sojourn only lasted two rounds, missing the cut by 1 stroke. Better news from darkest Africa where Kazuma Kobori turned in another excellent display, shooting a final round of 66, 5 under par, to finish in a tie for 31 st place at the Kenyan Open which lifted his earnings so far this season on the DP World Tour to E65,000, close to NZ$100,000. The other really encouraging news around Kobori’s game in Nairobi was his driving and putting. According to the official stats from the Kenyan Open, Kazuma was Number One in driving accuracy and 4 th in putting, two very significant statistics which, if he can maintain those sorts of figures, augurs very well for his future this year. Kobori isn’t the only feel-good story coming out of NZ golf over the past week. Across the ditch, Kiwi golfer, Nick Voke, whose career to date epitomises the very essence of that nomadic itinerant golfing model referred to above. Well on Sunday he won the Webex Players Series Sydney at the Castle Hill golf club in NSW. Nick, only 30 years of age, has already played on PGA Tours in China, America, Asia and Australasia and picked up A$45,000 for his win in Sydney - and boy, was he in scintillating form, shooting rounds of 66, 64, 67 and 69 to win from Aussie’s Jake McLeod by 1 stroke. If Nick can carry his Australian form into the NZ Open at Millbrook this week, he will be one to watch. Nick’s win in Sydney means Kiwi golfers have now gone back-to-back winners on the Australasian circuit with Josh Geary winning on the same Tour last week in Victoria. So, keep an eye on Voke and Geary this week in the Deep South.

Kiwi golfers were not terribly visible over the past week. Ryan Fox didn’t qualify for the rich Genesis Invitational, the latest signature event on the US Tour. And both the US LPGA Tour and the DP World Tour had weeks off. So, in a curious irony NZ’s two LIV Golf ‘defectors’, Danny Lee and Ben Campbell, held centre stage as they competed in the latest LIV event staged at the Grange Golf Club in Adelaide. For what I’m sure was the first time on our television screens here, we had the sight of these two rivals Tours going head-to-head, competing for viewers. The LIV event went out live on TVNZ+ and the Genesis on Sky TV. One thing was for sure - the presentation of the two events was profoundly different. You could be forgiven for thinking the LIV event was part of some nearby rock concert. It seemed every hole they cut to you could hear music coming at you, if not blaringly loud, at least prominently audible. I can’t say it especially disturbed or upset me. Clearly LIV wants spectators to enjoy themselves. Their motto seems to be, the more noise, the better, and interestingly the players seemed cool with it as well. The crowds were large. Their front person kept reminding us, with almost nauseating frequency, that over 100,000 fans had showed up over the three days. The players decked out in shorts only added to the ‘party’ atmosphere. In many ways it was LIV Golf’s answer to the recent Phoenix Open played in Arizona a couple of weeks back. Like the Phoenix Open, this event in Adelaide oozed with booze. The huge turnout in Adelaide can, in part, be put down to the undeniable reality that Aussie golf fans have been starved of the presence of big names for their headline tournaments for years. The Australian Open, for decades going back to the ‘60s and ‘70s, was considered the unofficial 5 th Major, such was the calibre of the field this event attracted. Regular annual visitors included the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. Those days are now just a nostalgic memory. So it is not surprising to see Aussie golf fans in their droves from all round the country heading to Adelaide to catch the likes of John Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, plus a host of Australia’s best headed by Cam Smith and Mark Leishman. But ah, what about the golf I hear you say. Well I’m afraid, here the USPGA Tour wins hands down. With all due respect to the hype and hoopla that came with the LIV coverage, the leaderboard on the final day was dominated by the likes of Joaquin Niemann, Abraham Ancer, Calos Ortiz and David Puig who finished in that order from 1st to 5h . Fine golfers all of them, but household names, I don’t think so. John Rahm and Brooks Koepka finished inside the top to give the final leaderboard a tinge of starpower. Mind you there wouldn’t be too many complaints from the two Kiwis in the field. Ben Campbell finished in a tie for 23 rd place and took home US$190,000 and Danny Lee US$135,000 for finishing 37 th in a field of 54. Meanwhile over on Sky TV, the final two days of the Genesis produced plenty of superb golf as the likes of Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy tried to run down golf’s bright new star, Ludvig Aberg, the 25-year-old Swede who fired a brilliant 6 under par 66 on the last day to head off Scheffler (who also shot 66) by 3 shots. Rory’s putter unfortunately stayed cold all day and he finished just outside the top 10. Yes, by comparison, the Genesis was free of hype and hoopla and at times their presenters are just a little too deferential towards sponsors and players. But in the end they didn’t need rock stars playing in the background. Instead, they allowed their own true rock stars of golf ie Scheffler, McIlroy and company to duel it out on the fairways and greens of Torrey Pines. PGA 1 LIV Golf 0.

A flurry of New Zealand golfers were visible on tours around the world over the past week, including the rare sight of two Kiwi women competing in the USLPGA’s latest event. Ryan Fox was in Scotsdale, Arizona, competing in that most remarkable if not the most unique of tournaments, the Waste Management Phoenix Open. And two Kiwis were hard at work in the Middle East at the Qatar Masters and in the most bizarre event of the year, a handful of Kiwi golfers took part in the Victoria Open at Barwon Heads, 20-odd kilometres from Geelong in rural Victoria. I say bizarre because the final day was played in winds, the like of which none of the players in the field had ever encountered before. The winds were so strong that a number of players, including the leaders, were seen imploring officials to suspend play mid-round. Among the complainants was the man who eventually won the tournament, 40-year-old Kiwi golfer Josh Geary, whose patience finally wore thin on the 8th green when he had a two-and-a-half-foot putt for par from a dead flat lie. He barely touched the ball, which then wriggled slowly to the hole which it missed, then it gathered speed and rolled downwind for another 15 feet at least. Many other golfers were having similar experiences. Eventually officials came out to inspect the worst affected holes which included the 8th , After much discussion with the players, the officials said play must continue. Their thinking, I guess, was formed around the fact that many in the field had already completed their rounds and had played their full 18 holes in windy conditions. However, as we know, usually the wind reaches its peak in mid to late afternoon, which was the case here. I can’t recall ever seeing balls move so freely from still positions on putting greens as they were here. Many decades ago (back in the 1980’s) at one of NZ’s top professional events, the Garden City Classic, being played at the Russley course in Christchurch, I recall play was suspended as a strong norwesterly wind blew in from the Southern Alps. The balls that day were moving for sure but nowhere as much as they were on Sunday at this event in Victoria. When balls are blowing 10-20 feet past the hole from short 2- and 3-foot putts, the course quite simply is no longer playing fairly and play should be suspended. It was making the Victorian Open look like a putt putt event. Fortunately for Josh Geary, he had, by the time he reached the 8 th hole, built up a 6-shot lead over the field, so he had a bit of a cushion and he needed it. On the back nine he had a run of 4 straight bogeys. Fortunately for him his nearest rivals were going backwards as well and in the end the Kiwi got home with a 4-shot winning margin. It was a memorable day, that’s for sure, for Josh. Apart from the windy memories he’ll take with him forever, it was also his first win on Australian soil for 12 years. Asked for his reaction when he came off the final green, he said, “Carnage. I’ve never seen anything like that on a golf course”. This from an 18-year veteran professional who has played on all of the world’s major golf tours over the past two decades. He was, as the Aussie TV commentators admitted, the best player by far over the four days. Prior to the final round, Geary hadn’t recorded a bogey. He’d had three rounds in the mid-sixties. On Sunday he shot 78 and still won by 4 shots. Go figure. Incidentally, because of the wind and the myriad problems it presented, the leaders took the best part of seven hours to complete that final round. Meanwhile, on the world’s leading women’s Tour, the USLPGA, Lydia Ko wasn’t the only golfer flying the Kiwi flag. There alongside her in the field was 20-year-old Fiona Xu from the Titirangi Club in Auckland. Fiona had earned her playing card for the LPGA Tour at the end of last year. And not to be out done by her illustrious compatriot, Fiona made a good fist of things. Here up against the world’s best, she finished in a tie for 50 th place with Lydia, who, it must be said, probably had a tournament she would rather forget. Something was horribly wrong with Lydia’s game on the first day, dropping 6 shots in her first 6 holes which included 2 double bogeys. Although she recovered over the rest of the round, she still finished 3 over par and never really featured in the tournament over the final three rounds. Elsewhere Ryan Fox made a good start at the Phoenix Open and had pulled himself up to inside the top 25 after two rounds, only to fade over the weekend and finish in a tie for 69rd place. It was, however, his first start on the US Tour and against a backdrop of long-distance travel, having played a couple of events in the Middle East just prior to teeing it up in Arizona. It looks like a bit of jet lag might have kicked in over the last 2 rounds. And back in the Middle East, Daniel Hillier continued his good consistent form on the DP World Tour with a 25th place at the Qatar Masters. He sits in 3rd place in the Race To Dubai, the rich end-of-season Championship final. Unfortunately Kazuma Kobori, our rookie pro on this Tour, missed the cut by 1 shot.

Yes, let’s be very clear, Rory McIlroy won the 2025 Pebble Beach Pro-Am Championship despite what should have been a tournament-wrecking horror stretch on the back 9 on Day 2. Here he bogeyed 4 holes in the space of 6 holes. But Rory has always loved defying the odds and he did it in spectacular fashion, playing some of the very best golf of his career at one of America’s most iconic courses. This US$20million signature event brought together for the first time in 2025 most of the world’s top 50 golfers. Normally a bogey run of the magnitude McIlroy suffered would have killed off any chance of winning. Fortunately for the Irishman the sheer calibre of his golf on the other 66 holes enabled him to defy traditional thinking which claims you can’t win a golf tournament in Round 1 or 2 but you can lose it, especially when your game falls apart as dramatically as it did for McIlroy at Pebble Beach. This win was his 27th on the USPGA Tour and having followed his career closely, I‘m not sure I can recall too many occasions when he has played any better golf than he did over those last two days. He shot 65 on Saturday in appalling conditions and 66 on the last day. Watching those last two rounds of McIlroy’s was to watch a magician at work. Off the tee he was impeccable and super long, the best part of 15-20 yards ahead of his opponents on most holes. His short game was second to none. Time and time again his deft touch around the greens saw him get up and down to save par, often from the lush thick rough that rings the tight small greens at Pebble Beach. The hole in one on Day 1 which he pulled off on the par 3 seventh which measured just a tad over 100 yards underlined the deadly precision of his short game. He flew his wedge from the cliff top tee straight down into the hole. Also, his putting was very solid throughout the 4 rounds. He may not have won a Major for ten years, but I’m prepared to bet he will win one this year if he can replicate his Pebble Beach form. Scottie Scheffler remains, quite rightly, indisputably the Number 1 golfer in the world. He played at Pebble Beach, yet finished 6 shots behind McIlroy, another pointer to the peerless quality of McIlroy’s golf. Sure, it was Scheffler’s first start in 2025, but he was still in very good form, shooting 3 rounds in the 60’s and a 2 under par 70 in the other. But what do they say Rory? “One swallow does not a summer make”. However, making some hay while the sun was shining in the Middle East were Daniel Hillier and rookie pro Kazuma Kobori who continues to make a good fist of things in this first full year as a playing pro. Both ironically finished in a share of 24 th place, each pocketing E23,000 or approximately NZ$43,000. Lydia Ko too had yet another useful pay day when she finished in a tie for 6 th place at the Tournament of Champions at Lake Nona in Florida, Lydia’s home course where she has performed well over the years. She looked likely to have another top 3 finish this year after shooting rounds of 67 and 65 on Days 2 and 3. However a wayward front nine which included 3 bogeys took her out of contention on the last day, even though she went on a bit of a birdie run after that, playing the last 12 holes in 5 under and picking up a cheque for US$120,000, rounding out a very productive week for our leading golfers.

Three Kiwis lined up for the latest DP World Tour event, the Ras Al Khaimah Classic in Qatar. Now if you know your golf, the name of this tournament should ring a bell for you. Yes, this was the event three years ago that Ryan Fox won, his second DP World Tour win, but his first over the traditional 72-hole stroke play format. So Foxy was back in the desert looking to repeat his February 2023 win. Also playing last week were fellow Kiwis Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori. Unfortunately, the latter two missed the cut. Hillier, I guess, could be forgiven if his head was still a little in the clouds after that epic duel he had last week over the last round of the US$9million Desert Classic in Dubai where he duelled with Tyrell Hatton right down to the wire, eventually finishing runner-up. Kazuma, in his rookie year on this Tour, might well have made the cut but for two double bogeys on the back nine on Day One. That left Ryan Fox as the only one of the three to make the cut and he made it, with just a shot to spare. Two good solid rounds, however, over the weekend, in particular on Sunday, saw him move up from around 60 th place to a final share of 27 th place. Sure, he would have loved to have repeated his showing here from three years ago, but this outing, coupled with his 10 th place at last week’s rich Hero Desert Classic in neighbouring Dubai, represents a very solid start to his playing schedule for 2025. He opened up in Qatar with an even par round of 72, then went under par for his final three rounds, including a 4 under 68 on the final day. So, of the eight rounds Foxy played over the two tournaments up there in the Middle East, six of those eight were under par and the other two were even par 72’s. That will give the Kiwi plenty of confidence as he heads now to America to start his season on the rich but tough USPGA Tour. His game will also benefit greatly this year, I’m hoping, from having to undertake far less travel. Ryan and his wife have established a residential base in the USA for this year, meaning he can spend much more time with his family and much less time sitting in aeroplanes. Meanwhile on the PGA Tour, Harris English picked up his 5 th career win, taking out the Farmers Insurance at the famous Torrey Pines course in San Diego. A talking point that has emerged again from this Tour is the pace of play. English and his two playing partners in the final group took three hours to play the front nine on the final day. That equates to a six-hour round to play 18 holes. That’s just crazy. Dottie Pepper, the well-respected roving television commentator, said on air at Torrey Pines, “This has just got to change. What is needed is respect (from players, I’m presuming) for fellow players, fans, television viewers, for everybody”, to which fellow commentator, Frank Nobilo, totally agreed. Personally, I think one of the big problems here is ‘caddy chat’, as I call it. Do a player and a caddie really need three to four minutes to discuss how to play their next shot? No I say, emphatically no. Might be time to start putting the clock on these chats. Anyway, to finish on a more positive note, this week’s upcoming event, the famous Pebble Beach Pro Am, includes in the field World Number One, Scottie Sheffler, and Rory McIlroy, who, I’m pleased to say, are two of the quickest players on tour.

Hi there golf fans and welcome to our first column for 2025. If the last week is anything to go by, 2025 promises to be a bumper year for Kiwi golf. Our two leading male golfers nearly pulled off a truly remarkable double act. Midway through the final round of the Hero Desert Classic in Dubai, Daniel Hillier was in a two-way tie for first place and Ryan Fox was in a tie for second place. Was this going to be a 1, 2 Kiwi finish in this US$9million tournament? One of the richest golf events anywhere in the world in 2025. Alas it wasn’t quite to be. As the sun went down in the desert, Daniel Hillier finished second to Tyrell Hatton and Ryan Fox finished in a tie for 10th place, a result he was very pleased with. As he pointed out, he hadn’t played in a tournament for a couple of months. He also had medical matters around his hip that needed attending to. All he was hoping for, in this his first outing of the year, was a few good swings from each round to get him back into some sort of form for another tough year. However, the real story here was Daniel Hillier, who came so close to claiming that first prize and the winner’s cheque of US$1.5million. Daniel led for much of, in fact most of, the last three rounds, following his brilliant 7 under 65 on Day 2 which shot him to the top of the leaderboard at the halfway stage. He hung onto that lead during the third round. The final round became a bit of a shootout between Tyrell Hatton and Hillier. In the end Hatton bettered Hillier by a couple of shots, shooting a 3 under 69 to Daniel’s 1 under par 71. The Kiwi was let down by a couple of poor greenside chips from admittedly thick rough, but his inability to get up and down from little more than 5-6 meters proved costly. However, Daniel walked away with US$900,000. Quite apart from that being the biggest pay cheque of his professional career, a number of other benefits will flow from that runner-up performance. His world ranking will take a jump forward, and he also now sits in second place on the Race to Dubai points table. This is the rich end-of-year DP World Tour finale in Dubai worth millions to the winner. Maybe, above all of the rest, is the enormous confidence he will take from this showing. With a purse of US$9million it attracted big names from all round the world, even a handful of LIV golfers were eligible to play and of course one of them, Tyrell Hatton, won the event. Not so lucky was fellow LIV golfer John Rahm who missed the cut.  Also in the field was Rory McIlroy, multiple winner of the this event, Tommy Fleetwood and Patrick Reed. For Daniel Hillier to finish second in a field of this quality means he can now foot it with the best in the world. However golf can be a very fickle game.

Well the golfing year is all but done. Only the one event of interest to us last weekend, the Grant Thornton Invitational played in Naples, Florida. The defending champions in this combined men’s and women’s team event were Lydia Ko and Jason Day. The ANZAC duo put up a good fight and finished in a respectable tie for 6th place this year, 6 shots behind the winners, Patti Tavatanakit from Thailand and Jake Knapp, a young American pro. It wasn’t too bad a pay day for Ko and Day who shared US$200,000 for their short stay in Florida. With the year done, it’s probably appropriate to look back over the last 12 months and do a bit of a roll call on our leading golf talents. So who has been the NZ Golfer of the Year? Well, there can’t be much argument here. Clearly Lydia Ko was our most outstanding golfer in 2024. When you win a gold medal at the Olympics and follow that up with a win in the Open Championship a week or two later, you far and away take the crown for this country’s leading golfer. Lydia for all of her success in 2024 nonetheless didn’t get the much coveted USLPGA Player of the Year.  That title quite rightly went to Nellie Korda for her 7 wins in 2024, including a run of 5 straight consecutive wins mid-year, one of which was a Major title, the Chevron Championship.  But just to show us all that she’s not a automaton, she then promptly missed the cut in the year’s next two Major championships. All up Lydia won 3 times on the USLPGA Tour and in total had 7 top tens, along of course with that Olympic Gold medal at the Paris Olympics. And her pay packet for the year from prizemoney winnings alone - just under US$3 million. Next, at Number 2 on our Kiwi golf rankings for 2024, has to be Ryan Fox.  This wasn’t a vintage year for Foxy who ends the year with his world ranking sitting at 83, a big drop from those heady days a couple of years back when he climbed inside the world’s top 30. However, 2024 was a transitional and a tough year for Ryan.  His recent successes in Europe saw him gain a playing card to the USPGA Tour in 2024. It meant having to effectively shift house from Europe to the USA for his wife and baby daughter and him, all the while on the road most weeks playing on a new Tour, the toughest in the world. While he didn’t enjoy the type of success he’d reaped in Europe, his tough grinding skills saw him make enough to keep his playing card for 2025 in the USA and that, I suspect, was his top priority in 2024. To hang onto his playing card on tours as demanding as the USPGA Tour, with its extraordinary depth of playing talent, was a major personal achievement for Foxy. He will, I’m sure, be much more competitive in the US in 2025, now that he’s familiar with most of the courses he’ll play on. Also hampering his game in 2024 has been a niggling hip injury which hopefully he will have rectified by the time his 2025 season starts after the Christmas/New Year break. Rounding out my top 3 Kiwi golfers for 2024 will be a name that will surprise some, Ben Campbell, who doesn’t play on either of the world’s 2 top tours, the USPGA or the DP World Tour.  Yet Ben, this year, pocketed the best part of NZ$2.5 million playing on the rejuvenated Asian Tour, where for the second year in a row he registered a win - this year the Indonesian Masters and he came very close to successfully defending his Hong Kong Open which he won in 2023. This year he missed out on a sudden death playoff in Hong Kong by 1 shot. One of the features of his game this year has been his consistency with a host of top 10 finishes. The Asian Tour has forged a close relationship with LIV Golf. This makes sense to some degree for both tours. LIV golfers who play in Asian Tour events are eligible for official world golf ranking points, which in turn raises the credibility and appeal of events on this tour. So well done to Ben Campbell. His series of high finishes this year on this Asian Tour has seen his world ranking jump from 244 at year’s beginning to a now career high of 139. He has well and truly overtaken Daniel Hillier who wasn’t able to repeat his 2023 form this year and now ranks outside of the top 200. Others who deserve mention in passing in 2024 include Kazuma Kobori whose brilliant form on the Australian PGA Tour at the start of his professional tour a year ago has seen him earn his full playing card for 2025 on the DP World Tour. Sam Jones, another rookie who turned pro a year ago and promptly secured his DP World Tour card for 2024 via the Qualifying School, had a tough first up year as a touring pro. Despite a few healthy pay cheques he couldn’t quite finish inside the top 115 on this Tour and had to go back to Q-School where he came up short and so lost his full playing card for 2025. However, he showed me he has enough strength in his game to suggest he’ll be back on the big tours sooner rather than later. That’s it from me for 2024.  I’ll be back when the big tours kick off in mid-January. In the meantime, I hope you all have an enjoyable Christmas and New Year and find time to get in plenty of good golf.

Ben Campbell is a name that should, but probably doesn’t, resonate widely among the Kiwi golfing fraternity. Ben has become something of the invisible man of NZ golf. Last weekend, for example, for the second time in three weeks, he has pocketed a large chunk of prize money from a rich Asian tournament. His 4th place at the International Series event in Saudi Arabia saw him take home US$235,000 or close to NZ$500,000. These two healthy pay cheques have lifted Ben’s winnings on the Asian PGA Tour this calendar year to US$1,110,00 which equates to around NZ$2.5 million. Only Ryan Fox, out of our leading male golfers, can match Campbell’s effort this year. His 4th place in Saudi Arabia and his 2nd place in the Hong Kong Open a couple of weeks back are among the very best individual performances by a Kiwi golfer this year, outside of Lydia Ko’s extraordinary late end-of-season run. Ben’s career exists in something of a golfing vacuum. As he doesn’t play on either of the world’s two leading tours, the USPGA or the DP World Tour, news of his golfing exploits barely gets a mention back here. His 4 th place last weekend in Saudi Arabia was in a tournament on the Asian Tour that boasted a field of the highest quality. A host of Major Championship winners such as Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel were in the field. That is some field, let me tell you. Yet unless I missed something, none of the big media outlets such as TV1, TV3, Radio New Zealand or even the usually reliable NZ Herald carried news of Campbell’s performance. Sure, it could be pointed out that the list above of Major Championship winners were for the most part from LIV Golf. They play in Asian Tour events because it then makes them eligible for World Ranking points. The Asian Tour permits LIV Golfers to play in Asian Tour events because it brings mutual benefits to both tours, a trend incidentally which is gradually, if ever so slowly, spreading to the DP World Tour as well. It appears now only the USPGA Tour, the world’s leading tour, refuses to allow LIV Golfers to play in regular weekly USPGA Tour events. Back to Campbell’s showing in Saudi Arabia. He missed getting into a sudden death play-off by just a single shot, finishing at 20 under after two rounds of 64 on both Saturday and Sunday. Brilliant golf. However, his latest showing has lifted his world ranking to 139 and now leaves him clearly as New Zealand’s second-ranked male player behind Ryan Fox, currently ranked at number 83 in the world. Campbell began the year ranked 239, so his rapid climb in 2024 is further proof of what an outstanding year he has had. Ben was also part of an unusual Kiwi triumvirate at this event in the desert which included Nick Voke and Danny Lee. Lee missed the cut, but Nick Voke also enjoyed a reasonably good week, finishing at 9 under in a tie for 50th place, still taking home close to NZ$50,000 in prize money. Nick has enjoyed a good year on this tour, winning all up US$150,000 over the year.

No-one should have an issue with Golf Australia’s willingness to embrace diversity in their sport. Last week’s Australian Open carried A$6.8 million dollars in prizemoney, equally split between the Men’s Open Championship and the Women’s Championship which ran concurrently on the same two courses and yes, equality was undoubtedly the real winner. The event was played on two of Australia’s finest courses, Kingston Heath and the Victorian Golf Club. However, watching the event on television back here, I felt a little cheated. In trying to give equal live and simultaneous coverage to these two high status events proved inevitably counterproductive as each event, in a sense, was cutting the throat of the other. While you were watching live coverage of the men’s event you were missing live coverage of the women’s event and vice versa. However, I would argue televising each event live and for all 4 rounds is still a better option for television viewers. Have the Men’s one week and the Women’s the next. Who is disadvantaged under that system? Neither I would argue. Could you imagine, for example, the Bledisloe Cup being shown live alongside a women’s rugby test between Australia and New Zealand. Five minutes of the men’s test and then we whip over to women’s test for the next 5 minutes. It would quickly be seen as television lunacy at its best but that essentially is what we got last weekend with the live coverage of these two Australian Opens. Both events had a host of big names from around the world, underlined by a Korean woman taking out the Women’s title and an American won the Men’s. In their defence of their dual coverage approach, Golf Australia argued not very convincingly they had to juggle the interests of many different stakeholder wishes. The interests of the poor old television viewers here and across the world didn’t seem to rate terribly highly. So to the golf. There were a handful of Kiwis competing in both events. The best of the Kiwis was the little-known pro from these shores, Hanee Song, who finished 10th in the Women’s championship and earned around A$30,000 for her troubles. Hanee, who plays on the Ladies European Tour, has had her best ever fortnight as a pro finishing second the week prior to the Australian Open in the NSW PGA. These two top 10 finishes back-to-back have seen her world ranking improve by 93 places. She now sits at 475 on the women’s world ranking list. Finishing in the top 10 at the Australian Open suggests she is more than capable of continuing this rapid ranking rise. For the Kiwi men, this event offered valuable ranking points for those playing on the DP World Tour - Daniel Hillier, Kazuma Kobori and Sam Jones. Unfortunately Sam didn’t make the cut, but Hillier and Kobori made a good fist of things over the weekend. Kazuma Kobori, after a brilliant opening round of 65, hung in there to record rounds of 74, 72 and 72 for a share of 26th place and Hillier, who began the last day just inside the top ten, faded with a round of 75 to see him slip to 35th place overall. Kobori in his first year as a pro now stands in 26th place on the DP rankings, half a dozen places ahead of Daniel Hillier.

The curtain continues to come down on the golfing year but not before the completion of the various rich Tour Championships Finals. This week it was the turn of the game’s leading female exponents to divvy up no less than US$11 million (NZ$17million) in prizemoney in Naples, Florida. At last it seems as if Corporate America is finally, albeit slowly, acknowledging the worth and merit of women’s golf. It’s been nothing short of a scandal in recent times to watch the ever-galloping increase in prizemoney for men’s tournaments, sure, fuelled out of necessity to some extent by the advent of LIV Golf and its huge purses via Saudi Arabi’s dubious petrodollars. It’s hardly surprising the Saudis, given the harsh restrictions they impose on their own female citizens, have shown little interest in replicating their men’s LIV Golf template on women’s golf. Most weeks, while women on the USLPGA Tour play for a total purse of US$2million, their male counterparts in some other part of the US are often playing for ten times that amount. So the CME Globe’s Women’s Tour Finale, with its total US$11million purse and US$4million of that going to the winner, was a most welcome addition to the golfing calendar. As expected, Lydia Ko, in the form of her life in recent months, was right in there chasing down that huge first prize. In the end, despite a brilliant final round of 63 (9pars and 9 birdies), Lydia had to settle for third place and a cheque for US$500,000 (NZ$850,000). How she must be kicking herself for a series of putting woes during her second round which saw her take 34 putts. She admitted after this round she failed to come to terms with the fact that the greens were running much quicker on Day Two than they were on Day One. Her opening round of 67 included just 26 putts, her second round of 74 required 34 putts. However she staged an amazing recovery over the final two rounds, posting a 67 on Day Three and then that 9 under 63 to finish with. Incidentally, across the four rounds, Lydia missed only one fairway, hitting 55 out of 56 fairways, an almost unbelievable statistic in either men’s or women’s golf. The big prize and that 4 million cheque went to the 24-year-old Thai golfer, Jeeno Thitikul, who finished eagle, birdie to edge out the American, Angel Yin. The two playing together on the final day had a seesaw battle all day. In the end it came down to the final hole. The two were tied at 21 under as they made their way up the last hole. Thitikul put her second shot within 5 feet of the hole while Yin’s second came to rest also on the green but 25 feet from the hole. She missed her long birdie putt. Thitikul, with 4million dollars riding on one 5-foot putt, made hers to record her fourth victory on the LPGA Tour. Elsewhere, closer to home, there were good finishes by three of our younger brigade of pro golfers - Nike Voke, Kazuma Kabori and Kerry Mountcastle - all of whom finished inside the top 25 of the Australia PGA Championship at the Royal Queensland layout. Voke was the best of the Kiwis with a final round of 65, 6 under par, which elevated him in to a share of 8th place. Kabori got off to a great start with birdies on 3 of the first 5 holes. Unfortunately for the young Kiwi he dropped shots 10, 13 and 14 but showing his great promise, two late birdies saw him sign for 2 under 69 and a share of 15th place and a cheque for AUS$16,000. Mountcastle finished in a tie for 24 th place. Due to some adverse weather, the tournament was reduced to 54 holes. The three Kiwis now head to Victoria for the Australian Open to be played across two courses - Kingston Heath and the Victoria Golf Club starting Thursday. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, Kiwi golfer Ben Campbell finished second at the Hong Kong Open which forms part of the Asian PGA Tour. Campbell, the defending champion, put up a brave showing as he tried to defend his title. He opened with a 63 and followed that up with a 65 on the second day to lead the tournament at the halfway stage. But on Day Three he and the rest of the field were humbled by a remarkable display of red-hot golf by 2019 Masters Champion, Patrick Reed, who shot a 59 - 11 birdies and 7 pars. He joins that very rare club of golfers who have shot under 60 in a professional 72-hole tournament. Reed went on to record a three-shot victory on the last day, but Ben Campbell stormed home over the last 9 holes, recording 5 birdies in the process to finish alone in second place, worth just over NZ$400,000.

Once upon a time a $1 million prize for winning a sporting tournament would have been a front-page story. No more. Already this week, two Kiwi sportspeople, neither absolute household names, have been recipients of 7-figure prize packages. Erin Routliffe and her Canadian doubles partner shared US$1.5 million in prize money for winning a women’s double tennis title in Saudi Arabia and on this day, Steve Alker, by no means our leading golfer, nonetheless picked up US$1 million for winning the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup on the USA Seniors Golf Tour. Ah… yes there’s plenty of good money to be made in them golf and tennis hills these days. Other Kiwi golfers had other things on their minds over the past week. Sam Jones, after an encouraging rookie year on the DP World Tour, didn’t earn quite enough to ensure his playing card for 2025, so he went off to Spain last week for another crack at the dreadful Q-School. Sam is there with 155 other hopefuls from all around the world, trying to nail down a top 20 finish which will guarantee him his playing rights for next year. At the time of writing this column, he is 37 th after 3 of the 6 rounds. It’s a tough, mentally and physically draining exercise - 6 rounds in 6 days - a career-defining week for one and all. Life, however, was a lot more cheerful for 53-year-old Steve Alker after banking his US$1 million dollars, finishing the season-long points race on top for the second time in his short Seniors career. For a golfer who spent the best part of 20 years on regular tours around the world, living for the most part off the smell of the proverbial oily rag, life has just done him a 180-degree turn. He never complained as he scraped together a miserable return year after year, just kept on plugging away. Then since he turned 50 and started playing Seniors golf, it’s like the golfing gods just turned on the cash tap and haven’t bothered to turn it off. Alker finished second behind Bernhard Langer, the 66-year-old German in the final event of the Champions Tour for 2024. It was a closely run thing as Alker and Langer played the final hole, separated by 1 shot. Unfortunately for Alker he couldn’t make a 12-footer for birdie on the last green which would have forced a play-off between the Kiwi and the German. However the significant marker here for Alker was that in finishing second, he overtook Ernie Els who was the leading points scorer in the $1million dollar race for the title before this final event got underway. Unfortunately for the normally highly consistent Els he couldn’t quite find his rhythm this week and had to settle for a 13th place finish and in doing so surrendered the $1 million bonus to Steve Alker. Across the pond and down in the Middle East desert Europe’s top players were warming up for this week’s Race to Dubai Championship finale where the winner could walk away with up to US$10 million. The warmup event in Abu Dhabi was won by the 39-year-old Englishman Paul Waring who opened up this tournament with rounds of 64 and then a course record 61 in Round 2. From that point on Waring was never headed. Whenever he got into some trouble his ever-reliable putting stroke usually extricated him from any real scoreboard pressure. It was a truly sterling showing from the quietly spoken Englishman. He had a bevy of golf’s heavyweights chasing him down on the last day headed by Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton among others. Rory, playing only his 5th event since the Paris Olympics back in July, roared home with an 8 under 64 but still finished 2 shots adrift of Waring. Rory, I suspect, will always remember this last round for the highly improbably birdie he plucked out of nowhere on the drivable 352-yard par 4 13th hole. McIlroy’s drive drifted away to the right, veering away and over a deep bunker and coming to rest in knee-high fescue grass or as Wayne ‘Radar’ Riley, the colorful and highly amusing Australian ground commentator observed, “trying to find that ball in there would be like trying to find a golf ball in Donald Trump’s hair”. Well Rory found it and against all odds decided not to take ‘an unplayable’ and so with all the considerable power he had, he smashed and lashed his club through the thick grass and managed extraordinarily to hit the ball out and up onto the front lip of the bunker in front of him. The ball fortuitously didn’t roll back into the bunker but just dribbled onto the edge of the green. Rory was left with a 55-foot putt over rolling terrain and then a sharp break down to the hole. Miraculously the little Irishman drained this improbable putt. Never have I heard a gaggle of British television commentators scream with such surprise and amazement over a putt. Talk about the screaming meemees, these guys sounded like some of those awful Australian rugby league commentators who go off the wall whenever a big try is scored. Rory and company will be in action again this coming week in the rich Race to Dubai finale and hopefully there’ll be more off the wall comic lines from Radar. He’s well worth a listen, not that I’d imagine they’d let him anywhere near a microphone if this event was being played at St Andrews.

Golf, so we are often reminded, is a truly global sport and yes, in terms of the money it generates and then disperses in the form of big prize money, it’s up there with tennis, football, basketball, baseball and a few other big-time sports. Yet here’s the odd thing, geographically, it’s far from a truly global sport. It’s huge in North America and throughout much but not all of Western Europe. In Africa it barely registers on any scale apart really from South Africa. The same can be said for South America and Central America. It’s not to say golf is not played on these two continents, it is, but huge multi-million-dollar tournaments which pop up every week in the USA and on the European-based DP World Tour are non-existent in Africa, South and Central America and the old Eastern European block of countries. So, without labouring the point, professional golf on the large scale is synonymous with wealthy first world countries.    There is one glaring exception to this rule and that’s Asia, where golf rules supreme in countries rich and poor. Traditionally however, for many decades, golf as in big moneyed professional tournaments only had a foothold in one Asian country and that was Japan. There, golf for a long time has ranked up there in terms of popularity, not far behind the likes of football and sumo wrestling. The Japanese Tour for years ranked as the world’s Number Two Tour, behind only the USPGA Tour. It offered huge prize money, not as huge but not far behind the money of the USPGA Tour. Many New Zealand pros, male and female, have done really nicely financially from playing the Japanese Tours. These days, while the big men’s tours, especially the USPGA Tour, are locked in a bitter battle with new comer LIV Golf, which has seen many big names defect from PGA Tours, lured by the huge almost obscene amounts of money players have been offered by LIV Golf  to switch camps, none of the fallout from this internecine war has been felt in Asia where the sport continues to grow exponentially. Symptomatic of this growth was the sight last week of the three biggest PGA men’s Tours all taking place in Asia and the biggest and wealthiest women’s Tour, the LPGA Tour of the United States, was also holding court in Asia. It’s very rare for the men’s PGA Tour to venture beyond the border of the USA but it did last week with the staging of the Zozo Championship in Japan. The leading players from the Japanese Tour lined up against many of the best from the USPGA Tour. Included in this field of approximately 80 placers was Ryan Fox. This was a real feather in Ryan’s cap to get an invite to this event. Again, like he has been for the past three weeks, Foxy was a model of consistency with 4 rounds close or just under par. Opening with a 2 over 72, then an even par 70, a third round 2 under 68 and a final one over 71.  Four good workmanlike rounds for sure but in a tournament where the winning score was 20 under par, a 1 over par for four rounds doesn’t bring many world ranking points or big dollars. Ryan now ranks at 109 on the FedEx Cup rankings. He’ll have to wait and see if that ranking inside the top 125 holds at year’s end, which if it does will see him keep his playing card for the US Tour next year. Elsewhere on the US Seniors Tour, Steve Alker had a truly wild rollercoaster ride at the inaugural Simmons Bank Championship in Arkansas. On Day One of this 3 round tournament Steve, as they say, shot the lights out when he reeled off 8 birdies and then eagled the par 5 18th for a round of 62, 10 under par, which gave him the first round outright lead. Unusually for Steve his consistency deserted him over the next two rounds, shooting a 2 under par 70 on Day Two then a 1 over par 73 on Day Three to finish in a tie for 12th place. Meanwhile back in Asia, in Korea, where the DP World Tour stopped, it ended in a fitting finish won by the South Korean golfer Byeong An who won the Genesis Championship. Kiwi Daniel Hillier, just inside the top ten when the 4th round started, faded on the last day recording a 2 over par 73 to finish in a tie for 22nd place, but still pocketed a healthy US$45,000 cheque for his week’s work. The Ladies LPGA Tour was in Malaysia where the Maybank Championship took place. Lydia Ko had another week off and it saw Ruoning Yin win for the second time in three weeks.

“Yes” screamed the front page of our largest daily newspaper, the New Zealand Herald. This, they claimed, was “Our Greatest Sporting Weekend”. Well, hard to disagree with that blunt summary of a couple of days of remarkable international achievements by our yachties, women cricketers, netballers and our male cricketers. Sadly, none of our leading golfers were able to join the party. Most of them were in action and performed well enough but not enough to match or surpass that America’s Cup win, the World Women’s Cricket T20 title, the historic test win by our male cricketers over India and a huge Silver Ferns netball win over their archrivals, Australia. Ironically, Ryan Fox was hard at work in the entertainment capital of the USA, Las Vegas. A win in ‘Sin City’ would have given him ample reasons to have partied long and hard on the Strip. As it was, he acquitted himself admirably over the four days with rounds of 70, 69, 65 and 69 at the Shriners Children’s Championship. It was one of those typical roller coaster weeks for Ryan, plundering a sack full of birdies over the four days, spliced unfortunately with a few double bogeys and a scattering of bogeys. However, his tie for 34 th place has done him no harm as he endeavors to secure his playing rights for the USPGA Tour next year. He must finish by year’s end inside the top 125 list of players. Currently he is 25 spots inside that 125 mark. This week he’s on the move again, pitching up in Chiba, Japan for the rich Zozo Championship worth US$8.5 million. His overall form in recent weeks has been pretty solid with good consistent finishes. What he would like to do this week is break out of those midfield finishes and nail down for himself a top 20 or better still a top 10 finish. That scenario would definitely confirm his playing status on the US Tour next year. Also in that part of the world has been Lydia Ko, who trekked back to her homeland for the BMW Ladies Championship which forms part of the USLPGA Tour. Lydia continued with her hot streak of the past couple of months, jumping out with rounds of 67 and 66 to put her within a couple of shots of the lead at the halfway stage, then almost inexplicably her putter went cold and she could do no better than see out the weekend with a pair of 71’s and a tie for 12 th place, her lowest finishing position in her last six tournaments which of course have included 3 wins. Her work off the tee and iron play in Korea was almost flawless. She retains her 3 rd place on the world rankings behind Nelly Korda and Liliana Vu. This week the LPGA Tour moves to Malaysia for the Maybank Championship. At the time of writing this column the field for the Malaysian event has not been released. Hopefully Lydia, given the form she is in, will want to line up again this week and keep that hot streak going.The winner last week in Korea was Australian Hannah Green who is having an excellent year, probably her best ever on this Tour. Her win last week was her third this year and has lifted her to 5 th on the world rankings. The rapid rise this year by Green has seen her overtake Minjee Lee, Australia’s leading female golfer in recent years. Lee, a two time Major winner, has struggled with her game this year and has now slipped to 17 th in the world rankings.

It was a very quiet week for our leading golfers, male and female. Only Ryan Fox and Steve Alker were plying their respective trades last week. Regulars Daniel Hillier and Sam Jones skipped the French Open on the DP World Tour and Lydia Ko had another week off, extending her current break to three full weeks since her last appearance on the LPGA Tour where she won the Kruger Open back on September 23. Lydia however, by all accounts, will return to the action this week when the Ladies PGA Tour stops by her country of birth, South Korea, for the BMW Ladies Championship. There are just six tournaments left on the LPGA schedule for 2024, culminating in the US$11 million CME Globe Tour Championship beginning on November 23. So, there is an awful lot of money up for grabs over the next five weeks for the world’s leading female golfers. If Lydia were to win in her home country this week, she would leap from 5th on this year’s money list to second behind Nelly Korda.  These two have been far and away the two dominant players in women’s golf in 2024 (9 wins between them). Yet if you look at their individual statistics for 2024 you might question that assertion of dominance. Neither, for example, is among the really big hitters in women’s golf. In fact, distance off the tee Lydia doesn’t even rank in the top 100. Currently she stands at 110th with an average drive this year of 255 yards. Korda, with an average drive of 269 yards, comes in only at 25th place.   But who was it that said in golf, “you drive for show and putt for dough”. Lydia Ko absolutely personifies that observation. Currently she is the 8th best putter on the LPGA Tour this year, averaging  29 putts per round, less than half a putt per round behind leader Danielle Kang of the USA. With wins in her last three starts Lydia will start this week as favorite as she seeks her 4th win of the season. It is certainly a golden run she’s having of late. She has now finished in the top ten in her last five starts which include those three wins. Meanwhile to the blokes on tour. Ryan Fox began the Black Desert Championship in Utah with a reminder to us all of just how good this guy is when he is on form. He recorded a 5 under par 65 off the back of two bogeys in his opening three holes. Then, the fox did truly get on the run, reeling off 7 birdies in his last 15 holes.  Unfortunately, Foxy couldn’t maintain that super low scoring pace over the ensuing three days as he went 72, 68, 70 to finish in a tie for 46th place, all of which has left him in 102nd place on the FedEx Cup points table. In order to retain his playing card for the USPGA Tour next year he has to finish the year inside the top 125 at year’s end which would seem he’s likely to do. Meanwhile Steve Alker on the Champions Tour finished in a tie for 5th place in the SAS Championship. As if yet again to underline his remarkable consistency Steve recorded only 2 bogeys from his 3 rounds and lifted his money winnings this year to US$2.1 million dollars to remain second on the money list and second on the Charles Schwab Cup list.

Big bucks were flowing the way of 5 Kiwi male golfers over the weekend - Ryan Fox, Steve Alker, Daniel Hillier, Kazuma Kobori and Sam Jones pocketed between them in excess of NZ$500,000 for their respective week’s work. We had 3 top 12 finishes, a 25th and a tie for 43rd. The big surprise was 22-year-old Kazuma Kobori - our newest and youngest touring pro. Not yet a full-time member of the DP World Tour but has been picking up the odd sponsor’s invite, including one last week at the rich Alfred Dunhill Championship in Scotland. This event attracted one of the strongest fields of the year anywhere outside of the Majors. Included in the field were a handful of LIV notables such as John Rahm, Patrick Reed and Brooks Koepka. However, one of the best performances from anyone over the final 36 holes came from young Kobori, arguably the youngest and least experienced player in the 168 strong field. After just sneaking into the field for the weekend, posting two opening rounds of 70 and with the pressure off his shoulders, he cut loose. And boy did he cut loose with rounds of 67 and a final round of 65, 7 under par. Playing the weekend 12 under par saw him catapult up the leaderboard from 54th to 12th place and with it a cheque of over NZ$110,000. Kazuma has earned a full playing card for the 2025 DP World Tour thanks to his remarkable run of success on the Australian PGA Tour last season. Meanwhile in Jackson, Mississippi, Ryan Fox was trying to nail down a high finish in the Sanderson Farms Championship in order to secure his full playing rights on the 2025 USPGA Tour and by the look of it he may have hit that goal with an 11th place finish which will go a long way to seeing him finishing comfortably inside the top 125, the cut-off mark for automatic playing rights next year. Foxy, with his hip problems of late apparently taken care of for the moment, shot 4 rounds in the 60’s. That should just about guarantee him his card for next year. His new ranking after this week’s showing has him ranked just inside the top 100. He is intending to play a couple of more tournaments while he’s in the States which he now can do with a lot of the pressure off him. Back on the DP World Tour Kiwi golfer Daniel Hiller found himself in a not dissimilar situation to that of Ryan Fox on the other side of the Atlantic. Daniel needed a reasonably high finish as well to take the pressure off him as he tries to secure his playing card on the DP World Tour for 2025. Well, he too rose to the challenge in the best possible way, shooting an opening round of 63, 9 under the card, at the Alfred Dunhill Championship being played in Scotland on 3 different courses including St Andrews. By week’s end he’d done enough to finish in a tie for 25th placed at 14 under the card and he now sits 93rd on the ranking list, well inside the cut-off position for next year of 115th. Sam Jones still has work to do to secure his playing card for next year but another solid week and a tie for 43rd has seen him move up a few places to 137th on the playing list but still needs to make up another 22 places at least to guarantee a place on the DP World Tour next year. Finally to Steve Alker and another good showing on the USPGA Champions Tour in Jacksonville, Florida, where he finished in a tie for 10th place, enough to see him remain second place for the season finale Schwab Cup.

Rory’s near misses continue while Lydia’s big wins mount. Yes, it’s been a truly fascinating week of golf, headlined by another outstanding showing from Lydia Ko. Two months ago, Lydia Ko’s golf game was once again all at sea, missing fairways, unable to get up and down from around the green with the consistency which has always marked her game, and even her legendary putting skills seemed to have deserted her. Nonetheless, off she went to the Olympic Games with her typically optimistic attitude. Regardless of how poor her results might be, Lydia will never display pessimism. She had her sights set on not just a medal but the gold medal to complete her 3-medal set. As her game fell into place, she could sense the gold medal was within her reach and as her confidence grew, her golf started to look like her game from a decade ago. One thing is for sure with Lydia, give her half a chance to snatch victory and more often than not she grabs it and so she did at Paris. But the fairytale was far from over. A fortnight later she showed once again why as a teenager she ruled the world of women’s golf. Neither the demands of the St Andrews links nor the appalling weather were enough to stop her storming to another victory and her third Major, this one being that very special title every golfer male or female yearns for - the Open Championship. But wait there’s more. After a well-deserved but short break she was back in the thick of it again last week in Ohio as the LPGA regular Tour resumed with the Kroger Queen City Championship. Now from start to finish here, over 4 rounds, we witnessed classic Lydia from a decade ago when she was picking up titles on this Tour with almost regular monotony. In Ohio she swept past this strong field which included the game’s Number One player, Nellie Korda. In the end Lydia romped home on the last day winning by 5 strokes, helped by arguably the best single round of golf she’s played for years - a 9 under 63. It was, to put it simply, flawless golf. Over the four days she recorded just one bogey. Her winning 4-round score was an incredible 23 under par. Now she has put herself in contention for the Player of the Year title which seemed an unrealistic expectation prior to the Paris Olympics, given Nellie Korda’s year which has seen her win 6 times in 2024 including a Major championship title. However, hold all tickets because here comes Lydia with a late charge that has seen her win 3 times now this year and pick up the Olympic Gold medal for good measure. The two of them, Korda and Ko, will soon go head-to-head in the rich, very rich, end of season Championship which will probably decide who gets that prestigious Player of the Year title. Meanwhile poor old Rory McIlroy once again for the second week in a row was edged out of a big title. Last week it was the Irish Open and this week the British PGA Championship at Wentworth. This was the title Ryan Fox won last year, but alas Foxy couldn’t mount any real defence of his title this year as his game fell away and saw him limp home, as it were, in 62nd place. Rory, however, in typical Rory fashion, went down blazing. He got himself into a three-way play-off, thanks in no small part to a 46-foot eagle putt which he drained on the 71st hole. So he, Billy Horschel and South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence went back out to the 18th hole for a sudden death play-off, after all three players finished the 72 holes in 20 under par. Thanks to a brilliant eagle 3 in the play-off the second time down the 18th hole, Billy Horschel edged out McIlroy for the title. The first American to win the British PGA title twice. New Zealander Daniel Hillier rounded out a good week with a final round of 68, a share of 18th place and a US$98,000 pay cheque for his week’s work. Daniel and Sam Jones are off to Spain this week for the Spanish Open which has attracted a world class field headed by Spain’s favourite golfing son, John Rahm.

A crop of top Kiwi golfers swapped furloughs for fairways this last week as the weekly grind of life as a touring professional resumed. Lydia Ko was the exception - she earned another week’s rest with the LPGA Tour giving way to the Solheim Cup. Three of our leading male players, Ryan Fox, Daniel Hillier and Sam Jones, all turned up at the same venue last week in Northern Ireland, Royal County Downs, for the Irish Open, headlined by Rory McIlroy. They were playing on what Rory calls just about his worldwide favourite course. Actually, Royal County Down, a links, is just a short drive from Rory’s home course, Holyrood, where he learnt to play this game. Sadly, only Sam Jones, out of the three Kiwis, made the cut. Ryan Fox bogeyed the last hole on Day Two to miss the cut by one stroke and Daniel Hillier was left a further shot back. Sam Jones made a reasonable fist of things, competing on this tough course probably for the first time, but a horror stretch on the front nine in Round 3 saw him drop 9 shots in 5 holes. This inevitably dropped him to near the bottom of the field, but he showed admirable determination by playing the last 27 holes of the tournament in 1 over par. For a rookie this shows he’s a fast learner. Royal County Down is one of Europe’s most demanding layouts. Being a links course it’s fully exposed to the furies of the North Pole’s storm-ridden weather patterns. A good drive upwind might roll out 200 yards, but downwind tee shots were flying out regularly over 350 yards. Rory himself hit one on the last day which sneaked out ever so closely to 400 yards. Unfortunately for the ever so popular Irishman he, not for the first time this year, let a big title slip from his grasp at the 11th hour on the last day. Here he was rolling along comfortably with a 2-shot lead, deep into the back nine, when inexplicably he 3-putted from 20-odd feet on the 17th green. In the group in front of him, Dane Rasmus Hojgaard was on a birdie tear, picking up shots on 16 ,17, and the par 5 18th . All of which meant that Rory, who had been leading the tournament by 2 shots with three holes left, now stood on the 18th tee, a 548 yard par 5 hole, and needed an eagle just to force a play-off. And boy did he give it a great shot. A brilliant 350-odd yard drive down the middle of a narrow fairway and then an equally exquisite long iron from 191 yards left him with an eminently straightforward putt of 8 feet for that elusive eagle he so wanted. In front of what must have been one of the biggest galleries at an Irish golf tournament, Rory left his putt millimeters short of the hole. He had to settle for second place, but still commands a huge points lead in the Race to Dubai title. Speaking of the Solheim Cup, an exact replica of the men’s Ryder Cup, the American women once again triumphed relatively comfortably beating Europe 15 and a half to 12 and half. Maybe someone in American women’s golf might like to look at the idea of America playing Asia rather than Europe. Currently there are 10 Asian golfers in the women’s top 20 world rankings. Europe has 2 and America 5.

According to the Golf Channel, Scottie Scheffler, the world’s leading golfer, pocketed US$62.2 million (NZ$100 million) in winnings from the 19 tournaments he played in 2024. In round figures that’s about US$3.25 million per tournament. Breaking it down even further, that’s just over US$800,000 for every round he played in this year. And oh… he also won the Gold Medal at the Paris Olympics… for which the poor thing didn’t receive as much as a cent. All up Scheffler won 8 tournaments this year, 7 on the USPGA Tour and the Olympics. His 7 wins in a single season is the most by a golfer in one year since a guy called Eldrick Woods won 9 in 2007. Yet Scheffler, one of the most likeable guys on the US Tour, wasn’t entirely happy with the FedEx Cup series format despite the windfall that spilled his way. He liked the old format better, where the big end-of-season purse went to the best player over the entire year, not to the player who just happened to win the finale off the back off a generous handicap. I kind of agree with Scheffler, except I have an even bigger gripe with the FedEx Cup format and that’s the absolute folly of using handicaps as the basis of the scoring for the finale. Handicaps are a wonderful thing… in amateur golf, because they level out playing ability between golfers. It means my mate who might play off a 24 handicap in theory could play Scottie Scheffler over 18 holes and the winner might only be discovered with the last putt on the last hole. But handicaps I’m sorry have absolutely no place in professional golf or any professional sport for that matter. When a code goes professional, the only thing that counts is money and every competitor starts from scratch in every contest. Yet in this, the richest tournament of the year, every player was given a handicap, ranging from -10 for the best player down to -4 for the poor bloke who happened to be ranked last on the FedEx Cup points table. Of course that’s the exact opposite of how handicaps work in amateur golf - the more you improve your golf the lower your handicap becomes. However here for the FedEx Cup, the brains of the USPGA did quite the opposite. The best player ie Scheffler was given the highest handicap and started the final with his score at -10 before he’d even hit a ball. The second-best player on the points table, Xander Schauffele, was given a -7 handicap so he began the tournament 3 shots behind the best player in the world, Scheffler, and so on it went down through the whole field. How on earth can that be seen as fair? Or put another way, imagine if the English Football Association (the FA) followed the FedEx Cup format and decided say for this season’s FA Cup final that Manchester City, as the best team across the season, would start the final against their opponents with a 2-1 advantage even before the match kicked off. It’s like something out of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. So back to the FedEx Cup, was it any wonder then with a generous starting handicap advantage over the rest of the field that Scheffler won the tournament by a handy 4 shot margin? But if it had been a traditional 72-hole stroke event he would not have won. The title and possibly that big cheque would have gone to Collin Morikawa who finished 22 under par - off the stick 2 shots better than Scheffler’s 4 round score of 20 under. Anyone for tennis?

Eight and half years is a long wait between drinks. That was the exasperating length of time Lydia Ko has had to endure between Major Championship victories. The drought ended appropriately for this seminal player in the women’s game at the very home, the very altar of golf, St Andrews, which also turned on for the last round one of its brutal weather specials - howling winds and driving rain. Through it all the slight figure of Ko remained somehow unbuffered and unperturbed. Remarkably, given the conditions, Lydia recorded only one bogey on her way to her lowest round of the tournament - a three under par 69. It was vintage Lydia, the tougher things got, the better she played. Two shots in particular over the closing holes reminded us once again why this phenomenal golfer had locked up two Major Championship titles while still a teenager. On the notorious Road Hole, the 17th measuring 446 yards, she confidently drew her drive over the edge of the grounds of the neighboring hotel into the middle of the fairway. From there into the face of driving rain she hit a 3 wood some 200 yards with everything she had to within 20 feet of the pin. Here she’d displayed the confidence and audacity to thread the ball incredibly down a thin narrow corridor between a massive greenside bunker and the pin. A few minutes later her nearest rival, Nellie Korda, the world’s Number One ranked golfer, attempted a similar shot from a similar position only to see it roll in to that greenside bunker and make a bogey five. Lydia knew however there was still to work to be done on 18 before claiming the big prize. So with a wedge in her hand and around 90 yards from the pin she calmly landed the ball just behind the hole and saw it screw back to within a couple of feet of the cup. History now was just a formality. In the end her winning margin was 2 shots. Yet for much of the back nine Ko and Korda were part of a bunch of 4 past or present world Number Ones tied at 6 under with just a couple of holes left. For those of us who have followed Lydia from her earliest days this was like a journey back in time as she revealed her incomparable array of golfing skills which inexplicably seemed to have deserted her for long periods over the past decade. The past fortnight however has seen Lydia return to her peerless best. Nellie Korda quite rightly still ranks as the world’s Number One female golfer. She must - she’s had 6 wins this year including a Major Championship title. But in this year of 2024 only Lydia Ko can claim ownership of the Olympic Games gold medal and a Major Championship title. She will now aways be regarded as one of the true legends of the women’s game. She’s had to fight her way back to the top in what undoubtedly has been an unparalleled era of expanding depth and quality in women’s golf. Who knows, there might even be one more unthinkable accolade within Lydia’s reach in 2024, the Halberg Supreme Sports award. Could she really pip three-time Paris gold medalist Lisa Carrington for the top Halberg prize in 2024? Ah! Let the debate begin.

Lydia Ko couldn’t quite deliver a winning 1-2 punch as she came up short at the Scottish Open. After leaving herself well placed after two sub par opening rounds, Lydia, for not the first time this year, wilted somewhat over the final 36 holes. She closed out with rounds of 71 and 74 which were nowhere near enough to get her into contention for back to back wins, following her last start win at the Paris Olympics. What Lydia was looking for here on the west coast of Scotland was a continuation of the form that carried her to that gold medal in Paris and also the chance to reset her game prior to the challenge of St Andrews, the home of golf, which looms this week as it hosts the Women’s Open Championship, the 5th and final Major of the year. To finish 9th at the Scottish Open against a strong field, all looking to hone their game as well for this week, was a job well done by Lydia who understandably may not have fully put the joy and satisfaction of Paris behind her yet. So this coming Major is really now the one remaining goal she’d like to collect before her expected retirement from the game within the next couple of years. Yes she has two Majors to her credit and even if she doesn’t add to that tally, she will retire from the game as one of the modern day greats of women’s golf. Few pundits in the game would have predicted after her second major in 2014 that this 17 year old would not add a third Major to her legacy over the next ten years. Sure she’s had some close shaves, but the other sad reality is, in recent years, Lydia has for the most part really struggled in all of the 5 Majors, even missing a few cuts in her darker days. With the Olympic gold medal fresh in her memory she should cut a very confident figure at the Open Championship this week. I’m reminded of a famous few words from 4 time Major winner, Ray Floyd, who, in reply to a question from an Australian television commentator, said, “Don’t get confused about the mental side of golf, it’s not 90% mental – it’s 100%”. Meanwhile the best of the Kiwi male golfers last week was once again Steve Alker with another of his solid tidy 4 round packages on display, finishing in a respectable 6th place on the PGA Champions Tour at the Rogers Charity Classic in Calgary, Canada. If it hadn’t have been for an unfortunate double bogey 6 on the par 4 13th hole in the last round he would have finished in a tie for third place. Ryan Fox finished outside the top 70 on the FedEx Cup points list so is not playing the FedEx series this year. The first leg of this 3 tournament series was won eventually by a very relieved Hideki Matsuyama. He began the day with a healthy 5 shot advantage over the field and comfortably held on to that advantage through the first 12 holes. Then for no apparent reason he self-imploded, dropping 4 shots in the next 4 holes. The big guns, and I mean the really big guns, Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schaufele and defending champion Victor Hovland, sniffed blood, and suddenly Matsuyama’s huge lead had sunk to the bottom of the Japan Sea. Hovland briefly held the lead until he faltered on 17 shifting the advantage to Schaufele who finished with a bogey free 7 under 63. He became the clubhouse leader but the deadpan Japanese wasn’t quite finished. After picking himself up off the canvas he mustered enough equilibrium to make a long 18 foot par for par on 17 then played a truly magnificent second from the rough to within 4 feet of the hole on 18. This long par four measuring nearly 500 yards was playing the toughest hole on the course on Day 4. Matsuyama claimed a rare birdie on this hole to record his 10th win on the USPGA. Right now Hideki looks likely to be one of just two golfers capable of stopping Scottie Scheffler winning this rich prize. The other is Xander Schaufele. Both are in very good nick so look out Scottie Scheffler, this FedEx title could be snatched away from you yet.

There have been many memorable NZ moments from the Paris Olympics. From a Kiwi golfer’s perspective Lydia Ko’s gold medal performance probably sits at the top. Such has been the erratic form of Lydia’s over the past couple of years it was hard to believe she could triumph in Paris against a field with a distinctly Major championship look about it. Lead by her putter , ably assisted by her driver and coupled with a sprinkling of those exquisite trade mark wedge shots all combined to get Lydia over the line and her hands on that gold medal she so anxiously sought. In some ways it was a bit of a trip back into her memorable past. One last hurrah possibly. Those days when she was regularly clocking victories on the LPGA tour against the world’s best. Always calm under pressure happy to her allow her short game to bail her out of trouble she made the game look so easy but as usually happens when you’re at the top in sport the only other movement you can make is downwards. And so it happened to Lydia. Victories dried up and missed cuts became the more obvious feature of her game. Caddies and coaches came and went in rapid fashion. Throughout these tough time Lydia’s smile never disappeared. In fact her optimism was probably her real coach during these dark days . She arrived in Paris with a couple of useful if not spectacular appearances behind her as she prepared for her 3rd Olympics. An even par opening round of 72 hardly provided evidence she was going to take this tough Parisian course apart. It nonetheless represented a solid start even if it did begin t with a bogey on the very first hole and a double on the par 4 15th . Day 2 saw Lydia’s putter take charge and as the putts started to drop a seriously low score looked on the cards . In the end she had to settle for a 5 under par 67 spoilt only by a bogey on the 18th . More of the same followed the next day . Six birdies and 2 bogeys and with a 4 under 68 Lydia had climbed into a tie for the 3 rd round lead with little known Swiss golfer Morgane Metraux who in her 14 starts on the LPGA this year had missed the cut in 9 of them. It was nonetheless a crowded leaderboard prime for someone to come out of the pack go low and grab the gold medal from under Lydia’s nose, It wasn’t to be fortunately for Lydia who again played solid reliable golf despite an error from the fairway on her first hole, going with hybrid for her second from about 150metres which saw her ball overfly the green leaving her with a steep downhill lie in rough which inevitably lead to a bogey. From that point however it was classic Lydia, the Lydia of old churning out the pars with 3 crucial birdies tossed in to the mix. All of a sudden her lead had shot out to 5 strokes as carnage was laying waste all over the course. The field were learning first hand why this French course is regarded as one of Europe’s toughest. Even Lydia at her near best was not exempt from punishment here. On the 13th she made a simple error after inexplicably plopping a half wedge shot into water from the middle of the fairway on a simple straightforward par 4. While this was happening another little known European golfer 25 year Esther Henseleit ranked 54th in the world from Germany was mastering these torridly fast greens as well stringing birdies together that defied her experience at this level. While Lydia was faltering on 13 Henseleit, playing a few holes in front of Lydia birdied both 17 and 18 cutting Lydia’s lead to just one stroke with 4 holes to play. This then was the time for Lydia to step up and calling on all her experience , patience and guile negotiated her way superbly through these demanding closing holes even managing to birdie the par 5 18th with a very conservative approach. She went with three wood off the tee laying up with her second and dumping her wedge inches from the hole. As she tapped the ball in for the win the relief was immediate and palpable as tears flowed freely down her face as she tried to absorb the enormity what she had just achieved winning the gold medal in her last Olympics , completing the 3 medal set and getting herself into golf’s Hall of Fame. Her superstar golfing status absolutely assured.

Sceptics and sadly there appear to be many in the golfing community who argue quiet vehemently golf should have no part of the Olympic Games. Their premise is based on the belief that an Olympic gold medal is not the pinnacle of success in golf. Winning a Major championship is and will always be golf’s highest achievement. Therefore only sports where the pinnacle of success is an Olympic gold medal should contest the Olympics. Quiet where this half baked theory comes from is unknown. Certainly Pierre de Coubertin when framing and outline his vision for the Modern Olympics back in the 1890’s made no mention of only opening the Games to those sports who believed an Olympic gold medal was the ultimate reward in their sport. These sceptics would do well to dwell firstly on the site of Scottie Scheffler on the victory dais at Le National Golf Club in; Paris after his win. At the playing of the American national anthem he broke down and sobbed almost uncontrollably overcome with emotion at what it meant to him to win an Olympic gold medal for his country in the sport he loves. Try telling him, the world ‘s pre-eminent golfer his sport has no right to be at the Olympiads. And as an aside how many times have you seen Scottie Scheffler reduced to tears after winning a Major. Then there’s the case of Rory McIlroy who was highly skeptical when he heard golf was being re-introduced to the Games in Rio in 2016. He promptly manufactured a fairly worthless excuse as to why he wouldn’t go to Rio. Eight years later after finishing 5th in Paris he claimed his Olympic experience was one of the most satisfying individual strokeplay events he’s ever played in, suggesting it wasn’t far short of a Ryder Cup experience. And sceptics want to deprive the game’s best players this unique experience of winning a medal for their country. The last day of the Men’s competition in Paris was as dramatic and as exhilarating as any last day I can recall from Majors over the 20 or 30 years. When the final day started most of the 8 players ranked in Paris inside the world’s top 10 were in contention on that last day. All of them had their moments, not all of them especially memorable. Some went backwards, some leapt in to contention spectacularly like Rory McIlroy who birdied the first 5 holes of the back nine to get within 1 shot of the lead with 3 holes to play. John Rahm was playing roller coaster golf for most of the day but never far from the lead as was Tom my Fleetwood and Hideki Matsuyama. In the end however the games number one player who silenced once again all the would be heirs to his throne. For the 7th time this year Scottie Scheffler emerged from the pack with his fail-safe brand of golf. Long and straight off the tee, peerless precision iron play and a superb display of putting. How anyone who loves golf could not enjoy that final day spectacle is beyond me. If the Olympics have no place on the golfing calendar then surely the weekly PGA events that make up the bulk of the 45 week annual tour in the US should also be scrapped because they too don’t by any stretch of the imagination represent the pinnacle in golf. And ask Russell Coutts if his gold medal medal at the 1984 Olympics represented the pinnacle of his yachting career.

Wiping away tears, an emotional Rory McIlroy tried to put into some kind of perspective his 2024 year, after his win in the Race To Dubai Championship final. He admitted his personal life as well as his golfing year had produced problems and difficulties. Usually it’s a given in sport that if you’re hit with serious personal problems, the first casualty is almost always your form. When personal scandals descended on Tiger Woods years back, he just stopped playing golf, full stop. Trying to line up a 2-metre putt to win a golf tournament when embarrassing details of your private life are scattered across the page of every paper in America is a pretty tough ask. To Rory’s credit when news broke mid-year that he and his wife had separated, he didn’t run for cover, he just kept on playing. It probably helped his golf no end that a week or so later they were back together again. But as we clearly saw after his win in Dubai last weekend, these things have taken their emotional toll on the Irishman. He also admitted he’d played in 27 tournaments this year, way more than his normal schedule of around 20 per year. Maybe he’s stumbled upon a new cure for grief - more golf. His win in that DP World Tour final was his third in 2024, two of them coming in the deserts of the Middle East, as well as the Wells Fargo Championship on the US Tour back in May. Frustration probably summed up his golf in 2024. His record in the Majors this year makes for an ugly read, for the most part - missing the cut at the Open Championship, a tie for 22nd in the Masters, 12th at the USPGA and a heartbreaking 2nd to Bryson DeChambeau in the US Open. So his Major drought continues, now stretching over 10 years. All of this helps explain his emotional state immediately after his win in Dubai. That too was an energy-draining exercise as Rasmus Hojgaard took him right to the death, the 72nd hole, before a McIlroy win was assured. The two, playing together in the last pair, staged in effect what was an enthralling match play seesaw over the back nine. Rory looked as if he was going to run away with the title after stringing 4 birdies back-to-back on the front nine to lead at one stage near the turn by 3 strokes. Doubt crept unfortunately into his game at that point. His driving lost a little of its normal accuracy, coupled with a three-putt green and a couple of Hojgaard birdies and the two were suddenly all square, both at 13 under. Rory rediscovered his mojo over the last three holes. A brilliant 6 iron to within a couple of feet to a tight pin placement on the par 3 16th which was playing 242 yards and a birdie 4 on the par 5 18th to Hoigaard’s par gave Rory a slightly comfortable looking 2-shot victory and a US$8million winner’s cheque. Across the Atlantic a sense of deja vu descended on the Women’s Tour as Nelly Korda racked up her 7th win of the year, confirming her Number One world ranking by taking out the Annika Championship. It’s the first time in 13 years a player has won 7 titles in a year on this Tour. Lydia Ko, after a third round of 65, had a longish shot at winning the title but a bogey-plagued final round saw her finish in a tie for 14th place. This was Lydia’s first outing for a month, so to finish the tournament at 6 under for her 72 holes I’m sure has satisfied her that her game is in good shape as she prepares for the rich Ladies Tour finale this coming  week.