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You don’t normally expect to see American national sports teams wearing pink - red, yes for sure, but not bright pink. But on the last day of the Presidents Cup in Chicago, the entire 12-strong USA Team were sporting pink shirts which rather fittingly reflected the quality of their golf. They were quite simply “in the pink”, running away in 12 singles matches 10-2. Perhaps it was inevitable that somewhere sometime before this Presidents Cup clash ended, the American golfing giant would wake up and remind the world of their depth in this sport. To win 9 of the 12 singles matches (1 match was tied) on the last day was nothing short of astounding, but that’s what they did. One by one the American players just squeezed the life out of their opponents who had dominated them so completely over the second and third days of this event. To see players like Hideki Matsuyama and Min Woo Lee missing 3-foot putts late in their rounds when they were in positions to close out their matches was a grim reminder of how shattered mentally many of the International players had become. This was the same American team who on Day Two were swept 5-0 by a rampant International team. I’ve long argued that American golfers much prefer singles golf to foursomes and four ball. The idea of standing on the tee and watching your mate tee off but not you, then you walk down the fairway and hit his ball is a ritual that seems foreign and odd to Americans who prefer the selfish world of being in your own isolated bubble which singles promotes. Golf is, whether you like it or not, basically a selfish game. Sure, camaraderie and 3 or 4 hours playing golf with your mates or partner has great social and recreational benefits but sharing with another person the exercise of hitting just one golf ball between you has never held much appeal to me, nor to most golfers I suspect. Peter Thomson, the late iconic Australian golfer, winner of five Open Championships and a former successful Presidents Cup captain, once told me in a radio interview that he couldn’t understand why the best golfers in the world are forced to play foursomes as they must in both the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup events. He said, perhaps a little unfortunately, that it was only really played these days by veteran women on Tuesday mornings at their own clubs. Yes, there would have been real disappointment in the International team after losing the singles day so comprehensively. However, the 17-13 final score didn’t really show how tight and close this Cup was for 3 and a half of the 4 days. Going into the last day with a 3-point lead, the Internationals only needed 5 points of the 12 on offer to clinch the Cup. Even though they failed again to win the Cup, they have shown us all that from now on, the pool of world class players from outside of America is sufficiently deep to enable future International teams to compete against strong American teams. And it may well be the next Presidents Cup, scheduled for Melbourne in 2028, when we will see the World prevail. At least in Melbourne they won’t have to endure that nauseatingly repetitious “USA USA” chant. At times I thought I was watching one of those truculent Trump rallies! But for 2026, praise, and plenty of it, must be given to the American players for that all-round true team effort on the last day. All in all, the 12 Americans produced 54 birdies on the last day, the Internationals only 45. Thankfully the unruly and blatantly offensive behaviour we witnessed 12 months ago in New York at the Ryder Cup wasn’t repeated here, although Scottie Scheffler was sufficiently offended on one hole by the crowd jeering at his Colombian opponent Nicolas Echavarria that he asked them to show respect and silence for his opponent while he was teeing off. The world Number One was still annoyed about the incident when he got to the green, so much so that he picked up his ball and conceded the hole to Echavarria. A fine act from a true golfing gentleman. Ryan Fox had a pretty good Cup, winning 2 of his 4 matches. He was then given the honour of being the 12th and final player out in the singles. Clearly Captain Geoff Ogilvy wanted a player who could hold steady for 18 holes and block out the crowd factor and play well for 18 holes if necessary, especially coming down the stretch if the Cup was still undecided. Foxy went hard at the endwinning two holes back-to-back but it wasn’t enough as Xander Schauffele closed the deal 2 and 1. But the result had already been decided in America’s favour before Fox and his opponent reached the 18th .

Another week in the bubbling, hectic golfing life of Ryan Fox which means, these days, another six-figure pay packet, well US$252,000 to be precise, for finishing in a share of 6th place at the prestigious British PGA Championship. It’s the new reality Foxy’s had to adjust to since winning the Open Championship last July. Every week he plays for a purse somewhere between US$10 and 20 million. Last week in the UK it was one of the smaller purses, just a mere US$9 million. It also meant fortuitously good pay packets for our two regular players on the DP World Tour, Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori. Hillier pocketed US$62,000 for finishing in 36th place and Kobori US$27,000 for his 56th finishing spot. However, it’s not all beer and skittles when you’re seen as one of the game’s elite, Ryan Fox’s newly found status. Opening up in a piece on the DP World Tour website last week, Ryan Fox admitted that the sheer number of requests he fields these days from sponsors, media and just ordinary golf fans wanting selfies and autographs has impacted on how much time he’d ideally like to spend on his game. “It actually gets quite hard at the moment. It just feels like at the end of the day, I’m like well have I actually played any golf today. Geoff Ogilvy, who won the US Open in 2006, told me it will be hectic for the first 12 months but then it gets a bit easier, but you will have it for the rest of your life”. Foxy did admit however, when he gets into a big tournament and playing in front of big galleries it still does get his juices going. And that must have been the case at the British PGA Championship at the top-rated Wentworth course last week. Of the golfers who finished ahead of him, five were Major Championship winners of late - JJ Spaun, Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Adam Scott and Aaron Rai. And the aforementioned Geoff Ogilvy would have been heartened by Foxy’s four good rounds at Wentworth because Ogilvy is the captain of the International Team which takes on the powerful United States team for the Presidents Cup this week in Chicago. Foxy, as one of the highest ranked players in the 12-man International Team, will have a key role in both the 2 fourball days and the singles on the final day. It’s the identical formula used for the Ryder Cup - 28 matches all up, which means 28 points. The winner is the team, like in the Ryder Cup, who can get to the magical 14 and a half points, the minimum number needed to win the Cup. And a final thought this week… a few consoling words for Daniel Hillier, desperately trying to climb into the DP World Tour’s top 10 which earns him a playing card for the USPGA Tour next year. He started the final round of the PGA Championship at Wentworth in 11 th place and then got off to a truly remarkable start in the final round with 2 birdies and an eagle in the first 4 holes. That saw him shoot up the leaderboard. He picked up a further 3 birdies from his remaining 15 holes but unfortunately, he also had two double bogeys. That saw him descend the leaderboard at the same rate he climbed it on the front 9. Eventually he had to settle for 36 th place but his DP World Tour standing is now 12. He has plenty of time over the next 6 weeks to climb into that top 10 though. Let’s hope he does. Meanwhile on the US Seniors Tour, Kiwi Steve Alker looks like he’s trying to emulate Ryan Fox. Alker finished second in the latest Senior event, the Pure Insurance Championship at the famed Pebble Beach course. Like Foxy, Steve is piling up cash every week. Sure, the pay cheques on the ’old boys tour’ aren’t anything like the ones cashed on the PGA Tour, but to date Steve Alker has won the best part of $20 million with 13 wins from his 4 years on the Seniors Tour. Not bad coin for a working man in his mid-fifties. Steve was coming off wins in his last 3 starts. Mind you, the winner in this event at Pebble Beach was Zach Johnson. This is his first year on the Seniors Tour and he’s now clocked up 6 wins from his first 15 starts. Way to go Zach!

Since becoming a Major Championship winner two months ago it would be fair to say Ryan Fox’s world has become one long demanding blur with a bit of golf (FedEx Cup) thrown into the mix for good measure. Mobbed by media and fans as soon as he came off the final green at Royal Birkdale, Foxy, with wife and two young daughters, took flight a couple of days later for some peace and quiet back here in NZ. Even his three weeks here had a slightly madcap look about it, as all and sundry wanted a piece of him, all of which probably counted against his being able to produce his best in those three weeks of FedEx Cup golf. With all of that behind him he’s had a couple of weeks to rest and recuperate at his home in Florida before his next big golfing date which starts this week in Chicago, the Presidents Cup. But even back in America he still had one more big public appearance to make and that was to lead the All Blacks onto the field in front of 68,000 people at the M & T Stadium in Baltimore, prior to the start of that 4th test between the Springboks and the All Blacks. It was an inspired move to have Foxy leading the ABs. The Americans love this sort of stuff, having celebrities from showbiz, politics or other sports throwing the first pitch in say a World Series baseball final. Given America is a golf mad country it was not surprising to see the reception the 68,000 strong crowd duly gave our Foxy when he emerged first from out of the players’ tunnel. Unfortunately, the All Blacks weren’t able to match Foxy’s winning performance at the Open Championship. But I’m sure Ryan’s father was very proud of his son last Sunday morning. However, far away from the realm of international rugby, another big-time golfing benefit flowed Foxy’s way last week. He is now listed high up on the FedEx Cup standings following his Open Championship win which forms part of the DP World Tour. Currently Ryan ranks 6th on the Road to Dubai rankings. If he can remain inside the top ten through to the end of the DP World Tour in mid-November, he’ll receive another big bonus payment like he did for finishing inside the top 30 on the USPGA Tour. Currently he retains 6th place and if he holds that ranking through to the end of the DP World Tour he’ll get a bonus payment of US$250,000, plus prizemoney from the US$10 million which is up for grabs in the Race to Dubai final starting on 12 November. Meanwhile on last week’s DP World Tour event, Kazuma Kobori completed another week of highly consistent golf finishing in a tie for 14th place, which still leaves him with some work to do over the next month or so in order to lift his ranking to inside the top 50. That will qualify him for the Road to Dubai final in mid-November. Daniel Hillier faded over the weekend at the Irish Open to finish tied for 46 th . But he’s in 9th place on the DP World Tour. He needs to finish in the top 10 in order to get a playing card for next year’s USPGA Tour. So, some very big days coming up for our two Kiwi hopefuls on the DP World Tour.

Not so long ago the sporting year was neatly divided into two seasons, essentially comprising winter sports, then as the weather warmed up summer sports dominated the sporting calendar for the next six months. However, the advent of huge prize money infused into many top line sports effectively smudged out those two distinct calendar periods. Now, companies and/or sponsors tipping tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars into big-time global sporting events want exposure for their products and brands not just for a mere six months a year but for the whole twelve. This has forced many sports to add more and more events to their respective sporting schedules, much to the chagrin of many competitors, in particular from physical contact sports whose competitors, with a certain amount of justification, complain of burn out and fatigue. The lack of down time and rest also adds to the chance of injury as well. Even a non-contact sport like golf is not exempt from these concerns. It’s not uncommon to hear top players, in particular, wanting to cut back on their playing schedules, citing fatigue. But at the end of the day, you can’t have it both ways. If you want the big dollars on offer, you have to turn up more often than you might think is fair. So, there is an odd irony attached to one of the biggest golfing events of the year, now less than two weeks away. The Presidents Cup is where 24 of the game’s leading players will go head-to-head, but the players won’t receive a cent in prize money. Like its big brother, the Ryder Cup, these two team events, among the most followed events in all of golf, are about playing for your country. Money just doesn’t come into it. While the Presidents Cup doesn’t have the history or drama that we associate with a Ryder Cup and it’s true the Americans have dominated the Presidents Cup, winning 13 of the 15 events to date, the International team has over the past decade become a lot more competitive. This year, the International team has 5 of the world’s top 50 golfers, headed by Si Woo Kim from South Korea ranked 13th in the world, followed by Ryan Fox ranked 25 th and Hideki Matsuyama at number 26. All up, 9 of the Internationals are ranked inside the top 60 and all play on the USPGA Tour. So they know their opponents well and won’t, I suggest, be intimidated at all in either the foursomes or the individual matches. Sure, the USA will start off favourites. They have 6 of the world’s top 10 in their side, headed of course by Scottie Scheffler and all but one of their 12 are ranked inside the world’s top 30. That is a breathtaking line-up. Ryan Fox, by virtue of his second ranking in the International Team, becomes a key player in their side. Winning selection to this team was one of Ryan’s chief goals for this year and his rugged determination and now his considerable experience of playing and succeeding under pressure in the highest realms of the sport will serve him well. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t perform exceptionally well in Chicago, where the Presidents Cup is being played. Expect to see that hard-nosed Kiwi fighting spirit come through with Foxy, just like it used to time and time again from his father in his rugby-playing days.

Odd as it may seem, you don’t always have to be in the winner’s circle in golf to pocket obscenely large barrels of money. Take the case of Ryan Fox. He clearly wasn’t at his best this week in the rich Tour Championship. A final round of 74, 4 over par, saw him finish 25th in a field of 29 yet he still took home $634,000. Scottie Scheffler, the winner, pocketed $16 million. Meanwhile fellow Kiwi Steve Alker won for the second straight week on the Seniors PGA Tour. The prize money for the old blokes on the Seniors Tour sure doesn’t compare with the main tour, but Steve, I’m sure, won’t have any need any time soon to be visiting soup kitchens around America. His latest win came at the Ally Championship in Michigan earning him $507,000. The moral of the story here, if there is one, is that, if you are a very good golfer playing professionally in the United States, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re 25 or 55 years of age, neither does it really matter what tour you’re playing on, you’ll take home plenty of cash, regularly. Steve Alker has never been a long hitter and so struggled for years on regular tours, living as it were off the smell of the proverbial oily rag. But bingo, how his life changed as soon as he hit 50 and became eligible to play the US PGA Seniors Tour where the courses are easier and shorter. Here he found his golfing niche. He’s still not a hugely long hitter. On the Seniors Tour he’s only ranked as the 29 th longest hitter. However five years on since joining the Seniors Tour and 14 wins later, he has now won over $20 million. And poor old Foxy. Well we probably shouldn’t shed too many tears for him either with his 2025-2026 season finished. His winnings topped $10 million and his career earnings on the US Tour alone are now a fraction over $20 million. Ryan, however, can now at best have a short break because in three weeks’ time he’ll be teeing it up as a member of the Presidents Cup team for their two-yearly joust against the formidable USA Team. And Ryan freely admits this is a big deal for him. Two years ago he narrowly missed selection and felt disappointed. So it came as no surprise when he stated at the start of this year that one of his main goals in 2026 was to earn a spot on the 12-strong Presidents Cup team. His win in the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in July made his selection a certainty. The Presidents Cup captain, Geoff Ogilvy, can only pick six players he wants because the top six picks come automatically from the Official World Golf Rankings. Ryan was the third highest ranked international golfer, so goes straight into the team. This team, yet to be named, will look, on paper anyway, one of the strongest teams fielded by the international team. It will bring together the cream of Japanese, Korean, Australian, South African and Canadian golfers along with likes of Ryan Fox. Yes given that it’s being played on American soil, it will be rowdy, at times I suspect probably excessively nationalistic. Will it get as nasty as it was at the Ryder Cup last year? Who knows. I have a sneaking suspicion Chicagoans might try to out do their New York citizens when it comes to so-called displays of patriotism. So tighten your seat belts. Leading the American charge will be Scottie Scheffler who confirmed his ranking and status as the game’s leading player with a 3-shot win in the FedEx Cup final. Scheffler, for sure, won’t be egging on the American fans. That’s just not his style. But if the likes of Patrick Reed (Captain America) are included in that USA team, all I say is, watch out.

Ryan Fox, our top male golfer, has enjoyed a handful of seven-figure pay days over the last 12 months or so, but potentially he’s in line for another this week when he lines up in the FedEx Cup Championship final in Atlanta. Talk about an elite field… this event is limited to just 30 golfers, only the top 30-point scorers across the entire season of the USPGA Tour. And never before, in my memory anyway, has so much money been thrown at any field of professional golfers, large or small. By all accounts US$140 million, that’s getting close to NZ$200 million, is up for grabs. Not even LIV Golf can match these sorts of figures for a single tournament. Take the winnings, for example, of Scottie Scheffler on the PGA Tour this season. To date he’s banked US$43.5 million before he even tees off in the FedEx Championship final. Scheffler’s money comes from a combination of tournament prize money and his share of a $100 million Bonus Points scheme. This Bonus Points fund is shared among the top 125 golfers from this past season at season’s end. Money is scaled down from $20 million for the top player down to $125,000 for the 125th ranked player. Now Foxy, by virtue of his scraping into the top 30, is nicely placed towards the top end of these massive pay outs, so he could take home millions if he plays as well as he did a month ago in the Open Championship. Even if he has a very ordinary week scoring-wise by his standards and finishes somewhere near the bottom of the field of 30, he’ll probably pocket in NZ money over a million dollars by the time Bonus Points money is added to his prize winnings. By grabbing that 30th spot at last week’s penultimate FedEx event, Foxy is guaranteed around NZ$700,000 in Bonus Points payment for his troubles. Added to that will be his prize money from Atlanta this week where 30th place earns around NZ$600,000. Trying to get one’s head around these figures is as mind-numbing as it is mind-boggling. I hope the 30 golfers in Atlanta this week remember to put LIV Golf on their Christmas card list this year. If they’re not on their list yet, they should be. Anyway to the golf itself… Last week in Missouri Ryan grabbed that last spot, but after posting 4 bogeys in his last 5 holes at the end of the third round, he must have been thinking he might have blown his chances. But a typically solid fighting final round of 71 on a tough day saw him retain his place inside the top 30. The eventual winner in Missouri was Wyndham Clark who held off a fast-finishing Rory McIlroy. Clark could only post a 1 under 70 on the final day. And a final number to dwell on… For the past 25 years Tiger Woods has been the top all-time money winner on the PGA Tour. His winnings stand at the moment at US$121 million, accumulated over 15 years on tour. At the moment Scottie Scheffler is in second place with $120 million in winnings from just 6 years on tour. Another top week in Atlanta and he’ll surpass Tiger’s long-standing record.

For most of his 100 years on this planet, celebrated American funny man Bob Hope had an undying love of golf, so much so that for many years he hosted his own tournament on the USPGA Tour. The annual Bob Hope Classic, played on the courses of Palm Springs in California, was one of the highlights each year of the PGA Tour. It brought together the rich and famous from Hollywood to Washington. Hope, the master of the one liners, used to say the only reason he worked as a comedian was to pay his golf fees. He once likened golf to grapes in a vineyard, “You know, one day you’re drinking the wine, the next day you find yourself picking the grapes”. And golf can be a little like that. If you shoot 63 on the opening day of a tournament, odds are the next day you are more likely to shoot 73 than 63. Right now, two of the game’s most talked-about golfers, Ryan Fox and Rory McIlroy, probably felt for the past week more like low-paid grape pickers than two of the world’s best golfers. Rory McIroy, the world’s Number 2 golfer, has just come back from a 3 week lay-off after the Open Championship and finished 62nd in a field of 68 in the St Jude Classic, the first round of the FedEx Cup finals. His good mate Ryan Fox has sort of travelled down a similar road since winning that Open Championship back on 22 July. Overwhelmed by the demands placed on his time, he left his US home base of Florida and flew back to NZ with his family in order to experience some good ol’ Kiwi peace and quiet. He returned to the USA a week ago, in time for the start of the 3-event FedEx finals. But he too finished near the tail of the same event after he, like Rory, had a 3-week break. However, what was encouraging for Ryan was his form on the last day, shooting a 3 under par 67, the third lowest round of the day. That suggests to me he has got most of his golfing mojo back and should be confident of better things this week in Missouri, the second event of the FedEx series. Ryan was also fortunate, even though he finished near the bottom of the field, that his all-important FedEx Cup ranking only fell 3 places. He goes into Missouri in 25th place knowing he has to finish in the top 30 this week to get his ticket to the FedEx Cup finals in Atlanta a week later. And a final word about Scottie Scheffler who produced probably his best golf of the year with his 8- shot runaway win and his 21 st victory since he joined the Tour in 2022. Scheffler is now averaging a birdie every 4 holes, something no other golfer has achieved in the past 40 years. His 8-shot win was the second time he’s recorded a win this big and yes, just as a timely reminder there’s guy in front of him on this count - a fellow called Tiger Woods who in his PGA career clocked up, believe it or not, 10 wins of 8 shots or more. Way to go Tiger, and yes still some way to go for Scottie.

You could be forgiven for thinking the top echelon of New Zealand’s golfers have, because of their lack of visibility in recent weeks, gone on some sort of strike. Ryan Fox last hit a golf ball in competition 22 days ago. Lydia Ko has played once in the last 5 weeks. The DP World Tour, home for Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori, seems to have gone into some sort of summer hibernation. Thankfully this Tour is about to re-appear on the golfing horizon this week in Scandinavia of all places with the running of the Danish Open which will hopefully see both Hillier and Kobori teeing it up. Ryan Fox, after a much-needed spell of rest and recreation following his Open win last month, will be back in business this week with the start of the FedEx Cup play-offs. It starts in Memphis, Tennessee later this week (3 events in all). Only the top 70 from the 2025-2026 season qualify. Foxy comes into the play-offs in 22nd place which leaves him ideally placed to advance to the second event next week, when its conclusion field is reduced to just the top 50. At the end of the second event only the top 30 contest the FedEx Cup final. Now the prize money up for grabs over the next 3 weeks is nothing short of mind-boggling, even by golf standards. All up US$140million will be won by these 70 players, with the bulk of it going to those 30 final qualifiers. So if Foxy plays with anything like the form he showed at the Open Championship last month, he’ll come home with millions. This is what happens when you win a Major Championship. As Grant Waite once said to me many years ago after he won for the first time on the main USPGA Tour (The Kemper Open 1993): “All sorts of doors open when you become a winner, but basically it means the rich get richer, very very rich.” I suspect if LIV Golf had not appeared, the money now on offer on the USPGA Tour would be nothing like it is today. Disliked though he is, the rock stars of the current Tour have much to thank Greg Norman and his fellow Saudi backers for. Oddly enough, one of the biggest signings LIV made in its early days was that of Brooks Koepka who returned to the PGA Tour at the end of last year. But with only 1 top 10 finish to his name, he failed to make it to inside the Tour’s top 70, so he won’t be playing in the FedEx Cup play-offs. Koepka finished the season in 94th place. His big problem seems to be his putting, finishing the season ranked the 116th best putter on tour. After this latest effort he didn’t have to wait for the golfing media to get stuck into him for his poor form. He did it himself, saying: “Pathetic and disappointed… I think it’s actually pathetic that I couldn’t get through (to the play-offs). To be in the prime of your career and be as good as I think I am, yeah that’s very pathetic and disappointing. I just need to go home and re-evaluate everything.” But it’s not all bad news for the 5-time Major winner. “Overall”, he said, “It’s great to be back… I really love being back, the reception has been great”.

In her near 15 years as a professional Lydia Ko has never seen another NZ golfer finish above her in a Major Championship, but it nearly happened this day at Royal Lytham and St Annes at the 2026 Open Championship, the 5th and final Women’s Major of the year. 26-year-old Kiwi Amelia Garvey from Rangiora stormed home on the last day of the Open with a final round of 68, 3 under par, the second lowest score of the day. This saw her finish in a tie for 23rd place, finishing just one stroke behind Lydia Ko who had her worst round of the week, a 3 over par 74, which saw her slip from 15th spot into a tie for 20th place. Lydia had a decidedly average day with her putter, taking a total of 31 putts. She also missed 6 greens and hit 3 bunkers. Amelia, for her week’s fine play, was rewarded with a cheque for just over $100,000, easily the biggest payday she’s enjoyed in her 5 years as a professional. Amelia now sits in 23rd place on the Ladies European Tour (or LET). Now, if by year’s end she can get herself inside the top 10 on the LET Tour, she advances to the final stage of the qualifying school for next year’s LPGA Tour. Lydia, incidentally, didn’t fare too badly for her 20th place, picking up a cheque of around $120,000. Her career earnings on the US Tour now stand at over US$21 million, second only to Annika Sorenstam. The title, for the second year in a row went to a Japanese golfer, 23-year-old Shiho Kuwaki, who was forced into a 2-hole play-off after she was tied with Germany’s Esther Henseleit at the end of 72 holes. Kuwaki won the play-off on the second sudden death hole after Henseleit’s second shot finished up in gorse and eventually she putted out for a 5 while Kuwaki two-putted for a par 4. Kuwaki has had 5 wins on her home tour and has made a bit of a name for herself in the Japanese media with her distinctive fashion style. With the $1.5million first prize now hers, I’m sure she’ll be hitting the designer clothes shops in Tokyo very hard and very soon. Meanwhile back in NZ Ryan Fox’s break from the helter-skelter life as a Major Championship winner is over as he returns to the USPGA Tour this week in preparation for the start of the super-rich FedEx cup finals beginning on 13 August in Memphis. This week the PGA Tour heads to Greensboro in North Carolina for the Wyndham Championship. The DP World Tour resumes next week with the Danish Open in Denmark. Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori are expected to be in attendance.

In the 5 seconds it took for Ryan Fox’s ball to roll the 11 feet from his putting blade to the bottom of the hole on the final green at Royal Birkdale, his life changed forever. In the space of those 5 seconds he went from golf hero to folk hero, honoured and praised globally not just for winning probably the most cherished prize in golf, the Open Championship, but also for the way he conquered that final demanding hole, a 473-yard par 4 playing as the most difficult of holes at Birkdale on that Sunday. He knew he had to make birdie on that hole to win the title and so, as they say in sport, “He went for it”. Only 3 golfers from the field of 70-odd before him were able to birdie that hole during the final round. Not even the knowledge that the fairway at some stages was only 15 yards wide could deter the ambitious Kiwi. He slammed his tee 330 yards right down the centre of the fairway, then floated a beautiful 9 iron to within 11 feet of the hole. It left the commentators and the huge crowd seated around the green speechless. Then once the magnificence of his golf had been realised by one and all, cheers erupted long and hard around this amphitheatre as Foxy marched confidently onto the green to address his putt and the rest as we know is history. Somewhat lost in the riotous celebrations that followed that successful putt was the huge list of benefits that he’s accrued. Ryan, in his typical low-key fashion, rather dismissed the $5.5million in prizemoney as a bit of an afterthought. But I guess when you’ve won the best part of $20million in winnings in less than 2 years on the US Tour, you can kind of understand his reaction. What I’m sure means as much, if not more, as the money are the exemptions he’s acquired, like a 5-year entry to all of the Majors which should help keep his ranking comfortably inside the top 50 on the World Ranking list. His win saw his ranking jump from 56 to 22. That also pretty much guarantees him a place in the FedEx Cup final which is restricted to just the top 30 golfers. The Open championship is of course also part of the DP World Tour, so his win last week would also, I think, guarantee him a place in the Race to Dubai season finale in November. His elevated status now on the USPGA Tour should free him up to return to NZ next year, if he so wishes, to play the NZ Open, scheduled again for Queenstown early in 2027. Can you imagine the crowd numbers which would flock to that event to see the current Open Champion, a Kiwi, playing in his national Open? Many other benefits will flow his way as well. Sponsors, club and ball manufacturers, clothing giants and goodness knows who else will be lining up to have their products attached to the name of this eminently sensible and likeable fellow. An indication of the tailspin his life has quickly gone into following his win was his decision to jump on a plane with his family and fly back to NZ for a couple of weeks to escape the mania that has surrounded him in the States. Meanwhile life continues apace on the PGA Tour and today produced another sensation when a 21- year-old American, Jackson Koivun, who has only been a professional for 24 days, yes 24 days, withstood a blistering weekend blitz from Scottie Scheffler to win the 3M Open by 3 shots. Scheffler played the last 2 rounds 15 under par with a 64 and 63 but still came up short by 3 shots to the young rookie who held his nerve to go 61 and 66 to match the world’s number 1, stroke for stroke, over his last 36 holes. An amazing feat. Koivun had been the world’s number 1 ranked amateur for the last 56 weeks prior to turning professional. Now we’re all left wondering how long it will be before he becomes the game’s number 1 golfer.

According to Ryan Fox’s long-time caddie, Dean Smith, “Ryan is probably the fastest golfer in the world”. After his dramatic, come-from-behind win to claim the Open Championship, Foxy can rightly be described now as one of the world’s best golfers as well. Commentators were simply left aghast at the magnificence of Ryan Fox’s win. Words like “unbelievable”, “extraordinary” and “one of the most remarkable victories in the long history of this Championship” were being showered on not one of their own, but a humble likeable bloke from the Antipodes. It was all very dramatic, but in reality, it was just another example of Ryan Fox going about his work quietly, his name well down the scoreboard through the first two rounds. Then on Day 3, Saturday, the day they call moving day in the golfing lexicon, things did change dramatically for Ryan and the rest of the field. Boy did Foxy move, reeling off 9 birdies on his way to a 62 which saw him jump from 54th place to 2nd , now a mere 2 shots behind leader Sam Burns. It was just the 8th time in Major Championship golf that a player had shot a 62, the lowest ever recorded score in a Major. That 3rd round 8-under par 62 set him up superbly to have an all-out shot at winning the Open Championship on Day 4 and that he did. Just like his father Grant, who would frequently show on the rugby field all those years ago, that when the going got tough, Grant got going. Dragging his fellow players with him appears a trait he passed down to his son Ryan. It was Ryan’s 19th win as a pro and many of them, especially notable ones, have come with a charge over the closing holes. Remember that long chip-in he pulled off in a play-off to win the Myrtle Beach Classic last year, his first win on the USPGA Tour. A month later, in yet another play-off hole for the Canadian Open, he played what he called the best shot of his career, a 3-wood which he smashed well over 200 metres onto the green, leaving him with two putts from 5 metres to claim the Canadian title. At Birkdale, midway through the back nine on the last day, he was back in about 5th place but still trailing some of the game’s big names. With 6 holes to play, he got to work. At this point he was 2 shots behind the clubhouse leader, Cameron Young, who shot the lowest round of the day, a 6-under 64. Foxy started his charge with birdies on 13 and 14, then a little hiccup saw him make bogey on 15 which meant that now he had to birdie 2 of the last 3 holes to win the title outright. In the best traditions of his father, he did just that. His birdie 3 on the 18th , a difficult par 4 measuring 420 metres, was the stuff of legends. It had a touch of Tiger Woods’ mastery. The fairway, for example, on this hole was only 15 metres wide in parts and the hole has 7 bunkers in all. Wisely Foxy took what looked like a 3-wood rather than a driver off the tee, hoping to keep it on the fairway which he did. It left him around 160 metres to the pin, dangerously placed near one of those strategically positioned bunkers guarding the green. It was playing as the hardest hole on the last day, but Foxy had no thoughts of just plonking the ball in the middle of the green, taking his 2 putts and finishing 2nd . It was for him, as our cobbers across the ditch like to say, “Sydney or the bush”. Without any fuss or delay he flushed a 9-iron straight at the flag. The massive crowd around the 18th hole saw the ball coming down on the green heading straight for the flag and held their collective breath, knowing the ball could easily roll off the green to the right. They needn’t have worried as it landed and trickled up to 11 feet (3½ metres) from the hole. The commentators, somewhat dumbfounded that anyone would dare try and get the ball that close to the hole, tried to digest what they’d just seen, but their voices betrayed them. Such bravery or was it unnecessary foolhardiness? It was probably neither, just Foxy having complete faith in his ability to execute the exact shot he wanted. It was golf as symmetrical beauty for which it would soon reward its architect. Now Foxy, the speed freak, kicked into action. He watched his playing partner, Sam Burns, putt out, then according to the Golf Channel analysts, Foxy took just 22 seconds from the time Burns picked his ball out of the hole until Foxy picked up his. In that time he weighed up the putt, with a quick look right, a quick look left, took his grip and stance and then just putted the thing and watched it roll into the hole and victory. I can think of quite a few of the world’s leading golfers who would have taken minutes, 3 or 4 at least, to weigh up all the potential factors that could be at work for such a crucial putt. Then there would be a consultation with their caddie, followed by a final review from the notebook with all the hole and green details, then a long mental adjustment until they were truly ready in mind and body before putting. There to watch his Kiwi mate win this big event was Aussie Min Woo Lee who said the speed Ryan plays is something we can all learn from. “Whenever a fast player wins, it’s the greatest thing ever.” Rather lost in the size of Ryan’s achievement was the highly admirable showing of fellow Kiwi Kazuma Kobori who had a final round of 72, 2 over par for a share of 28th place. Not bad for a kid barely out of the rookie class. I wouldn’t mind betting that young Kazuma from Rangiora might just be the next Kiwi golfer to lift the Old Jug.

Form is temporary, it is said, but class is permanent. In recent weeks our two top golfers have served to remind us of the underlying truth of that old saying. It’s been a lean few weeks for a number of our top golfers, but last week Lydia Ko and Ryan Fox showed their class when playing against the world’s best. Lydia lined up in France for the 4th Women’s Major Championship of the year, the Evian Championship, a title she won a couple of years back to give her a third Major title and then of course she followed up a couple of weeks later with a win in the Open Championship. But for the last couple of seasons, since those wins at the end of 2024, Lydia’s Major’s form has been poor. Going into the Evian last week she’d missed the cut in 3 of her last 5 Majors, without doubt the worst run she’s had in Majors in her 14 years as a professional golfer. However her form at Evian put to rest any suggestion that she was well past her best - 4 rounds under par, all 4 rounds in the 60’s and a final round of 64, 7 under par the lowest round of the final day. That was classic Lydia. In the end her 13 under total for the tournament didn’t really get her close to the title, but finishing in 7th place was a very rewarding outing for Lydia. Hopefully she can take that form with her back across the English Channel and into the final women’s Major of the year, the Open Championship at Royal Lytham and St Annes in Lancashire starting 30 July, on the course where Bob Charles won his British Open in 1963. And just to put things into perspective, that 7 th place last week was Lydia’s 18 th top 10 finish in a Major. Now this week Ryan Fox will be seeking his first top 10 finish in a Major when he lines up for the men’s final Major of 2026, the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. It’s fair to say Ryan hasn’t enjoyed the level of success on the USPGA Tour this year that he did in 2025, highlighted by those two victories mid-year coming within the space of 5 weeks. But what he has achieved this year is consistency. From 15 starts he’s made the cut in all but two of those events. Sure, his stats have been made to look better this year because he’s been eligible to play in all 8 of the rich Signature events, some of which don’t have a cut. Nonetheless, not only has he made the cut in nearly 90% of the events he’s played in, but he’s recorded 7 top 25 placings along with a 30th place finish in last week’s Scottish Open. This was a very strong field because it now forms part of both the DP World Tour and the USPGA Tour. Effectively he was lining up against the best of Europe. Two other Kiwis, Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori, will also play at Royal Birkdale. These two, however, will be looking for a change of fortunes with their games. Hillier has now missed the cut in his last couple of events and while Kobori has fared better, he too has had to grapple with form lapses in recent weeks. With three Kiwis in the field, a rare but not unprecedented situation, there will be plenty of golf fans back here glued to the four days of live coverage of the Open on Sky, even if it seems likely the Open will be competing with concluding stages of a certain “soccer” event taking place on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Zilch, nichts, nada, rien - yes it doesn’t matter which language you choose, last weekend, financially, was a decidedly unremarkable weekend for our leading five golfers. Among them - Ryan Fox, Lydia Ko, Daniel Hillier, Kazuma Kobori and Steve Allker – not one won as much as a single cent in prize money. Sure, Lydia and Ryan had weeks off, having played recent Major Championships, but both Hillier and Kobori missed the cut in the DP World Tour event in Munich and possibly most surprising of all, Steve Alker missed the cut in the Seniors’ US Open. It was pretty much an unforgettable week for the two Kiwis in Munich at the BMW International. Kazuma Kobori shot rounds of 72 and 74 to lie in 132 nd place after 36 holes, missing the cut by 6 shots. Daniel Hillier fared a little better with rounds of 69 and 74 but still missed the cut by 3 shots and was in a tie for 90th place at the halfway stage. His fate was largely sealed by his closing holes on Day 2 when he bogeyed 3 of the last 5 holes. He’s slipped further down the Race to Dubai points list, now sitting in 15th place, 5 places worse than he needs to be to gain an automatic qualifying spot for next year’s USPGA Tour. The Munich course gave up a veritable tonne of birdies. Making the most of this course was 39-year-old South African golfer Michael Hollick who recorded his first win on this Tour with a final score of 18 under par, helped by a birdie eagle finish on the last day. The cut was made at 4 under, the lowest of any tournament on the DP Tour this year. Things I imagine will be a lot harder this week when the DP Tour moves to the rugged stretches of the Scottish coast for the Scottish Open, which actually forms part of both the USPGA Tour and the DP World Tour. It is a co-sanctioned event and therefore attracts a large number of top golfers from the American Tour as well as the best from the DP World Tour. It acts effectively as a dress rehearsal for the Open the following week. There’ll be a three-strong Kiwi presence - Hillier and Kobori along with Ryan Fox. All three have also qualified for the Open Championship, the year’s final Major starting next week. Kazuma Kobori is a late edition to the field thanks to a flying visit he made at the start of last week from mainland Europe to the Lancashire coast to compete in a final qualifying event for the Open. Playing in this 36-hole West Lancashire event, Kobori finished tied for 2 nd place thanks to a second round of 65. It was a pretty tough assignment Kobori had given himself because included in this strong field were two past Masters winners, Sergio Garcia and Danny Willett. Only the top five finishers got invites to the Open, so Kobori’s showing was superb given the wet conditions which prevailed, breaking the heat drought that had seen Britian sweltering in the days prior. Apparently Kobori hadn’t given himself much chance of finishing in the top 5 but afterwards said both his driving and his putting had held up well and noted, “that when those aspects of your game are working, life’s pretty good as a golfer”. Let’s hope the so-called good life for this golfer continues for the next two weeks at least.

When Lydia Ko steps aside from her playing days, as she has indicated could happen within the next year or two, she will take with her a veritable basement full of memories, especially those around her three Major championship wins. She might have also tucked away memories from last week in her latest Major appearance, the Women’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine Golf Club in Minnesota, one of America’s top courses. Lydia began in the worst possible way with a 4 over 76. Her putter seemed stone cold. All up she needed 32 putts to complete that opening round, a most unlike-Ko statistic. They say in golf you can’t win a tournament on Day 1, but you can lose it with a very poor opening round. So at the end of that first round Lydia was a whopping 10 shots behind the leader. Realistically her chances of winning were virtually zero. She was 121st in the field going into Day 2. At least here her putter started working, which was just as well. With 5 less putts on Round 2 she carded a 3 under 69 which saw her squeak into the weekend, making the cut by 1 stroke. From 121st at the start of the round, Lydia was now in a tie for 55th place. Another strong showing on Day 3 with another 3 under 69 pushed her up to around 40th place. On Day 4, with the course playing at its toughest with fast bumpy greens and tight pin placement, Lydia still managed another sub-par round, finishing with a 2 under par 70. For a short while she had pulled herself up into the top 10, but a late bogey saw her slip back into a tie for 15th place overall. So it was quite a week for Lydia, but in a totally understated way she revealed her real qualities and her mettle. Never any sign of just going through the motions after that unfortunate first round as many a golfer might do. Very few golfers, male or female, could lift themselves in a Major against the world’s top 144 golfers from 121st to 15th . Lydia still has two Majors left this year to add to her three Majors and they happen to be titles she has won before - the Evian in France and the 5th and final women’s Major, the Open Championship. Meanwhile across the other side of the Atlantic, another very consistent and solid week of golf from Kazuma Kobori at the Italian Open on the DP World Tour. Four sub-par rounds saw the young Kiwi pro finish in a tie for 19th place and another handy pay cheque which lifted his earnings this year to around $NZ500,000. Not such a fortunate week for Daniel Hillier who missed the cut, albeit by 1 shot and has seen his all-important ranking slip from 11th to 13th . If he finishes the DP World Tour in the top 10 at year’s end, he gets automatic entry into the USPGA Tour for 2027. Our other top golfer, Ryan Fox, didn’t have a good week playing in the $20million Travelers Championship in Connecticut, finishing in a tie for 66th place, near the bottom of the restricted field. His worst round was a 1 over 71 and he finished with a 3 under 67, while for many in the field it was a birdie feast on this course. In the end Victor Hovland from Norway picked up his 8th PGA Tour win, beating Scottie Scheffler no less in a sudden death playoff.

It was indeed a strange sight (and sound) watching an American golfer who had led the US Open Championship from start to finish nonetheless being jeered and booed as he neared the finish line. This was the fate Wyndham Clark suffered on his way to a second US Open title at Shinnecock Hills. It seems New Yorkers hadn’t forgotten the scenes which played out on video a year ago at the US Open at Oakmont in Pennsylvania. Clark missed the cut and there and then went into an all-out rage in the locker room, smashing two lockers to pieces. Oakmont, it would be fair to say, was not amused and banned him from the course until he repaired the damaged lockers and underwent an anger management course. He obliged on both counts. Unfortunately for Clark he was paired with Scottie Scheffler on the final day this year. Scheffler of course just happens to be America’s most popular golfer and it was very obvious the bulk of the crowd wanted Scheffler to win. The fans’ negativity towards Clark seemed to have had an impact on his play. After three near perfect rounds which saw him build a 6-shot lead going into the last round, Clark stumbled all day and eventually got home with just one shot to spare. He admitted it was his putter that both let him down but also crucially saved him from what would otherwise have been another infuriating loss. Ryan Fox, on the other hand, enjoyed a very good day both on and off the course. Starting the last round positioned in the mid-fifties in a field of 72, Foxy at last produced the sort of form that has elevated him to the game’s upper echelon. His form at Shinnecock through the first three rounds wasn’t poor but at best average, given that he didn’t manage to break par in any of those first three rounds. He shot an even par 70 on Day One, struggled on Day Two with a 3 over 73 which saw him just make the cut. He was right on the cut number at 3 under par. Day Three wasn’t much better with a 4 over 74 and that saw him slip down the leaderboard towards the bottom of the field. But on Day Four Foxy got it right, shooting a 2 under par 68, one of the day’s lowest scores which initially lifted him slightly by a few places. When he finished his round he was in line for a cheque of around $US50,000. By the time the Open had concluded a few hours later, his $50,000 had tripled to $181,000 as player after player struggled on this tough Shinnecock layout. And one by one Foxy’s finishing position improved to the point where his official final placing was a tie for 23rd place. It could have been as much as another $US100,000 if he hadn’t bogeyed two of the last four holes. There can’t be too many positions or jobs where you can sit at your desk after your day’s work and watch your weekly pay climb while you don’t have to as much as lift a finger. That’s the league Ryan Fox is in now, playing for at least $US20million every week he tees it up. Meanwhile at the top of the field, the golfing gods were smiling on the American Wyndham Clark, even if not all the fans were. He did achieve the rare feat of leading a Major championship from wire to wire, as they like to say in America. The last time a golfer went all four rounds in the lead at a Major was the German Martin Kaymer in 2014. Clark essentially won the Open on Day One when he fired a 6 under 64. He had doubled his lead from 2 to 4 strokes by the end of the second round, then extended that lead to 6 shots going into the final day. It would have been something of a miscarriage of justice if Clark hadn’t prevailed. He was the best golfer at Shinnecock over the four days and he was big enough afterwards to apologise profusely for his unfortunate behaviour at last year’s Open. Holding the large trophy aloft after completing a live television interview, he called out to the large crowd around the 18th green, “I hope one day I can get you all to like me”. Well said. Matter closed.

It’s often said the hardest task confronting a newcomer to the USPGA Tour is not so much winning your first tournament but successfully defending it 12 months later. Sure, Tiger Woods made a habit of winning the same tournament year after year, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy have done the odd back-to-back wins in a row, but there can’t be too many others. Ryan Fox came very close to joining this elite group. Standing on the 71 st hole in the Canadian Open, which he won on this same Toronto course 12 months ago, he was in second place with two holes to play. He would have to birdie the 17th and possibly eagle 18 in order to catch leader American Bud Cauley. Not surprisingly, there was no holding back from the aggressive Kiwi, it’s how he likes to play his golf. Two safe pars on these closing holes were certainly not going to get his hands on a second Canadian title. Unfortunately, like most things in sport, when you up the ante, you also increase the risk. And so it turned out for Foxy. He missed the fairway off the tee on 17, a 499-yard par 4, one of the hardest holes on this Toronto course. His drive in fact finished up in a fairway bunker, 185 yards from the hole. Using his undoubted strength, Foxy moved the ball 185 yards, leaving him 25 feet from the pin where he proceeded to 3 putt. Now the gap was 5 shots between leader Cauley and the New Zealander. But, as they say, Foxy wasn’t going to die wondering. The 18th , a 520-odd-metre or 571-yard par 5, enough to win the hole and the title, had been there for the taking for Fox this week. He made birdie there on each of the first 3 rounds. Probably in his mind was the thought of an eagle and if Cauley were to stumble on 17 and 18, who knows, he might have been able to force a play-off. He smashed out a 300-metre drive, leaving himself just under 200 metres to the hole. Twelve months ago, in his play-off with Sam Burns, he smacked a 3 wood from 210 metres to within 10 feet of the pin on this hole, enough to set up the win, but alas history was not destined to repeat itself. Instead he came up short of the green and then saw his ball slide back into the adjacent lake and his hopes of a second Canadian Open drowned in a watery grave. He made bogey here as well, so a bogey/bogey finish for a 2 under 68 and a share of 8th place. Yes, privately I suspect Foxy will have been kicking himself, but he shouldn’t. A safety-first attitude over those two final holes would almost certainly have guaranteed him second place. That’s just not the way Foxy approaches golf. For his efforts he nonetheless has now jumped inside the top 60 on the FedEx Cup standings and for finishing 8th he pocketed $US286,000 or close to $NZ500,000 and he goes off to the US Open, starting on Thursday, knowing he’s just put together 4 rounds under 70, a sure sign his game is in good shape which it will need to be if he wants a top 10 finish this week. Finally, Bud Cauley, the 36-year-old American who won the Canadian Open, recorded his first win on the US Tour after 238 starts.

Lydia Ko and Nellie Korda, the two most celebrated names in women’s golf over the past 10 years, went to the famed Riviera Golf Club in California last week with one thing in mind, each anxious to fill in the one gaping missing piece from their remarkable list of career achievements, a US Open title. At the end of the week, one went home with that sought-after title to her name, the other didn’t even it make it to the weekend. Sadly for Kiwi golf fans it was Lydia who failed to make the cut. Her two-round score of 5 over saw her miss the cut by 1 shot. Unfortunately missed cuts in Majors are becoming something of an issue for Ko, who for the first 10 years or so of her career barely missed a cut in any tournament. From her first 35 Major Championships she missed the cut only once. Since the start of 2023, however, Lydia has failed to make it to the weekend in 6 of her last 17 Major starts. If she can win a US Open she will have achieved the Women’s Grand Slam which, for some reason I’m not entirely sure of, only requires women to win 4 of their 5 Majors. I suspect the 4 the women have to win are the same 4 Major titles men have to win to earn the Grand Slam. Curiously Lydia has been in good touch basically in 2026, until she gets to a Major. From 11 starts, she’s had 4 top 10 finishes. Her only missed cuts have been the 2 Majors to date in 2026. Our three leading male golfers, I’m pleased to say, fared better on both sides of the Atlantic. Ryan Fox again lined up in one of the 8 Signature events on the USPGA Men’s Tour. Only 72 in the field, most of whom were ranked inside the top 100 on the World Rankings. Yes, there was US$20million in prizemoney at stake, but with a quality field like this there were ironically no easy dollars there for the taking. Foxy again showed why he can hack it with the best in the world, finishing in a tie for 27th against this world class field. For his troubles he picked up US$157,000 (NZ$270,000). He also moved up to 64th place on the FedEx Cup rankings. This week looms as a big week for Foxy who finds himself, for the first time in his US career, starting a tournament as the defending champion. Yes, he’s back at the venue in Toronto where he won the 2025 Canadian Open in a play-off last year against the American Sam Burns. Foxy’s winning score last year was 18 under par. So I guess that’s the sort of number he‘ll have in mind as he begins the formidable task of defending that crown. In Amsterdam last week Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori both comfortably made the cut at the Dutch Open, but neither was able to kick on over the weekend. Poor old Daniel had the mortifying experience of putting two tee shots into the water on the short 115 metre par 3 4 th hole. He finally\ trudged off the green with a 4 over par 7. His round and tournament was effectively cooked there and then. He picked up 3 birdies on the back 9 to give some respectability to his round. His 73 did get him a 14 th finishing place, but he did drop out of the Race to Dubai’s top 10. He’s now 11 th . Kazuma Kobori also finished poorly with a 4 over 75 on the last day. He had 2 double bogeys along with 4 bogeys and 4 birdies, a real mixed bag and a tie for 28th .

After returning to the DP World Tour following his creditable showing at the USPGA Championship a few weeks back, Kiwi golfer Daniel Hillier I’m sure is more determined and confident than ever he can gain his playing card for the USPGA Tour in 2027. Last week in Austria Hillier took another step towards fulfilling that goal with a 7th placing at the Austrian Open. What was especially significant here was his move now into the top 10 on the DP World Tour‘s Order of Merit, or the Race to Dubai as it’s officially known. At season’s end the top ten place-getters on that Road to Dubai all receive playing cards for next year’s PGA Tour, the world’s leading and richest golf tour. Hillier was the personification of sub-par consistency at the Kitzbuhel Club - four rounds in the 60’s which saw him knit together two 65’s over the weekend. He recorded only 1 bogey in those closing 36 holes and finished the tournament as the leading player with the highest number of greens reached in regulation. And to add a little lustre to that impressive stat, he also emerged from the week as the longest driver in the field. He averaged 324 yards off the tee, with his longest drive measuring a staggering 363 yards. Perhaps his mate Ryan Fox has been slipping him a few tips on how to smash a golf ball. Of course now that he’s got himself into that all-important DP World Tour’s top 10, his task is to stay there for the next five months until the season ends in November. That won’t be easy. Essentially every player on that DP World Tour, somewhere between 200-300, is focused on winning one of those highly sought-after ten cards. Hillier came close to edging his way into that top 10 last year only to stumble slightly in the closing tournaments and miss out by a couple of spots. However his fellow Kiwi on the DP World Tour, Kazuma Kobori, has more pressing problems after another missed cut last week in Austria. He’s now missed the cut two weeks running, but hardly because of poor golf. In both of these last two tournaments he’s shot rounds of 69 and 71. I can’t imagine Kobori or his team are unduly worried about events of the past fortnight. Yes he slipped down the Race to Dubai standings and currently stands in 75th place on the DP World Tour, but remains comfortably inside the do or die number of 115. He must finish inside that figure to retain his playing card for next year. Not having any of those sort of worries is Steve Alker on the USPGA Seniors Tour after another successful week, this time in Morocco at the Trophy Hassan 11. Alker tied the low round of the final 18 holes in Rabat to finish in second place in this US$2.5million tournament to ensure another healthy pay cheque. It was his 4th top 10 finish of the year and he lies in 4th place on the Seniors Tour Order of Merit. The winner here for the first time on the Seniors Tour was the 52-year-old Australian Scott Hend, a regular face of many years at the NZ Open. This breakthrough win for Hend guarantees him full exemption on the Seniors Tour through until the end of 2027.

In the wake of the rigorous challenges of a Major Championship many of the world’s leading golfers give themselves a week off afterwards, some even more. The USPGA Tour, mindful of these demands, usually then schedules a tournament without quite so many of the mental and physical challenges associated with getting through four rounds of a Major. At the year’s second Major, the USPGA Championship in Philadelphia at the Aronimink course last week, no-one managed to get to 10 under for their week’s work. The winner, 38-year-old Englishman Arun Rai, won by 3 shots and finished the week at 9 under. From there the Tour moved to Texas for the CJ Cup, in honour of Byron Nelson, winner of five Major Championships. However, Nelson is probably best remembered for his remarkable achievement in 1945 when he won, believe it or not, 11, yes 11, PGA tournaments in a row, a record that not surprisingly still stands after 75 years. Not even Tiger Woods at his peak could get near that consecutive winning streak of Nelson’s. This year’s winner was former US Open champion Wyndham Clark. His winning score of 30 under par for his 72 holes contrasts rather vividly with Rai’s 9 under a week ago in the PGA Championship. Clark, mind you, had to play easily his best golf of the year to win here in Texas. His final round of 60 comprised of 9 birdies, an eagle and just 7 pars. He caught and overtook the 3rd round leader, South Korean Kim Si Woo, who had shot a 2nd round of 60 as well. As mentioned, many leading lights including Ryan Fox had the week off. All in all it was a very low- key week for NZ’s leading golfers. The US Women’s Tour had the week off and Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori both missed the cut in Antwerp at the Soudal Open. It was a peculiar week indeed for Hillier. Firstly, making a rapid departure from Philadelphia where he’d played 4 rounds at the USPGA Championship. Then he got off to a remarkable start at the Soudal Open, reeling off 4 birdies from his first holes and led the field, albeit briefly. Not sure what happened next, perhaps it was a case of jet lag and the toll of having played in a Major Championship many thousands of kilometres away a few days earlier. Two double bogeys and a couple of bogeys saw him tumble quickly down the leaderboard. Day 2 was only marginally better and after 36 holes he languished in 130th place, missing the cut by 6 shots. Kobori fared slightly better with rounds of 69 and 71 to miss the cut 1 shot. The winner, South African Richard Sterne, recorded his first win on this Tour in 13 years. Away from PGA Golf, LIV Golf got some headlines when it announced last week a 10-tournament schedule for 2027. Whether it ever sees the light of day is another matter. Their financial backer, to date the Saudi Arabian quasi government entity PIF (Public Investment Fund), is ending its financial support at the end of this year. LIV Golf accepts that in order to continue along the lines it has to date, it must find in the vicinity of US$300million. A very tall order. It’s estimated the Saudis have tipped in excess of US$5billion into LIV Golf to date. Is it any wonder then that they’ve said ‘enough is enough’?

The USPGA Championship is sometimes deemed, a little unfairly, the least prestigious of the four Major Championships. Sorry, this event is a Major Championship, full stop. The 100 top-ranked golfers in the world are automatically eligible to play this event. To my knowledge I’m not aware of any golfer ever who has turned down an invitation to play in the USPGA Championship. Anyway, the last day of this year’s Championship produced drama worthy of any Major. The fact that 22 players were within 4 shots of the lead when the final round got underway at the renowned Aronimink course in Philadelphia was further proof of how significant this event is. Packed into that group of 22 were 7 past Major winners. That ominous fact didn’t bother 31-year-old Englishman Arun Rai. He produced a string of unforgettable shots over the last 10 holes to clear out from the chasing pack and win the Wanamaker Trophy with a 3-shot margin. Perhaps his most spectacular shot was a 65-foot rolling twisting putt on the par 3 17th. . To shoot 65 on the last day of this event on a course that no golfer, including Rai, got to double figures under par further highlights how tough this course played over the 4 days. Incidentally Rai becomes the first Englishman for 108 years to win this Major Championship title. Our two leading male golfers, Ryan Fox and Daniel Hillier, fronted up and both to their credit made the cut. Hillier got into the field because of his world ranking of 92. His experience of playing golf in America amounted to very little. For him to make the cut and finish in a tie for 26th not only earned him the best part of NZ$200,000 but he proved to himself that he can compete with the world’s best on the USPGA Tour. His 26th placing will also earn him important points on the DP World Tour’s Road To Dubal season finale. So a very productive week all round for Daniel. Foxy finished in a creditable 37th place, completing the 4 rounds with a total of just 1 over par. Final word here to Rory McIlroy who got off to the worst possible start with a 4-over 74 including 6 bogeys, 5 of those bogeys coming in the last 6 holes. But no-one bounces back better than Rory. From finishing the 1st round in 119th place, he got to within 1 shot of the lead during the final round, but couldn’t finish the job, settling for 7th place overall. Meanwhile Lydia Ko finished in a tie for 8th place behind winner Lottie Woud, also from England, in the Kroger Queen City Championship in Ohio. After three rounds in the 60’s Lydia could do no better than an even par 71 on Day 4 to finish 7 shots adrift of the winner. It was Woud’s 2nd title on the USLGA Tour.

It’s probably the oldest cliché in golf. “You drive for show, but you putt for dough”. Those famous words were uttered 70 odd years ago by the man many believe to be the greatest putter of all time, South African Bobby Locke, four-time winner of the Open Championship. Gary Player summed him up neatly when he said once, “I’ve never seen anyone putt better than Bobby Locke.” Locke must have known something about this mysterious golfing art because he won four British Opens (The Open Championship) in 8 years between 1949 and 1957. Part of his legend apparently centres around the fact that he never lost a 72-hole tournament in his homeland for 20 years, thanks to his putting. Probably not far behind Locke in the all-time putting stakes was Sir Bob Charles. Both these players were regularly out-driven by many of their peers, but more than narrowed the gap on the big hitters when they got to the green. That maxim is absolutely still as true today as it was 70 years ago. No better example of this at work surfaced in Barcelona over the weekend when our own Kazuma Kobori, playing in the Catalunya Championship, came storming home and grabbed a share of 6th place thanks to his putter. Kazuma shot 67 on the last day, needing only 24 putts to complete his 5 under par final round. Now if a golfer only needs 24 putts to complete his 18 holes, it means in all probability he’s chalked up no less than 12 1-putt greens along with 2 putts on the remaining 6 holes. Kobori is by no means a big hitter. At this tournament he was only the 42 nd longest hitter off the tee on the last day, averaging 287 yards per drive, nearly 10 yards longer than his season average. But what he does is hit a lot of fairways, in fact he now tops the driving accuracy stats on this tour so far this season. He hits on average 78% of fairways off the tee, more than anyone else and remember, he’s playing his second shots sometimes 25-30 yards behind his playing partners. His 6th placing in Barcelona was his first top 10 finish of the year and has lifted him from 91st to 63rd on the all-important Race to Dubai season-ending Championship. Once again he was the personification of consistency, all four rounds under par and finishing off the final rounds with birdies on the last three holes. This has become a feature of Kazuma’s golf. When he finishes high, it’s often due to a late flurry of birdies on the last day. However the truly remarkable story at this tournament was the showing of the winner, little-known 22-year-old South African, Yurav Premlall, who won the tournament by 14 shots, the second-highest winning margin on either the DP World Tour or the USPGA Tour. The record margin is 15 strokes, Tiger Woods’ victory margin at the US Open some 25 years ago. It’s hard to believe this is just Premlall’s 9th start on the DP World Tour. From those 9 starts he’s missed the cut in 4 of them. Then he comes out and does this, rounds of 70, 64, 63 and 63 and for good measure he chipped in on the last hole to get within 1`shot of Tiger’s record margin. All up the South African had 33 birdies in his 72 holes. On American soil our two highest ranked golfers, Ryan Fox and Lydia Ko, had weeks to largely forget. Foxy finished 67th in a field of 72. He fared much better over the last two rounds than he did the opening two. Lydia was up there with the leaders after an opening 67 but couldn’t break 70 again for the week and finished in a tie for 18th place. Now all eyes in the golfing world this week will be on the men’s second Major of the year, the USPGA starting on Friday morning at the Aronimink Golf Club in Philadelphia, and good news for us back in NZ. We’ll have two starters in the field, Ryan Fox lining up in his 28th start in a Major and Daniel Hillier playing in his 6th Major. He’s in the field because he now ranks inside the top 100 so gets an invite to this Major.

“It was nuts”. The reaction of Scottie Scheffler to the putting performance of Cam Young’s 4th round of the Cadillac Championship in Florida over the weekend. ”I don’t think he missed anything”, added Scheffler and he wasn’t exaggerating as he talked about Young’s performance on the greens. Over the course of the round, he was 7 strokes better than anyone else in the field on the putting greens. Was it any wonder Young won the championship by 6 strokes - his second win of the year? Earlier he had beaten the world’s best players in the Players Championship. Right now Young, believe it or not, is the hottest property in world golf in 2026. Both Scheffler and McIlroy remain Numbers 1 and 2 respectively on the official World Rankings and both have won a tournament this year, but Young has won twice. Add these victories to his performance at the Ryder Cup last year where he was easily the best performed American and Cam is indeed your man. No, he’s not a household name just yet but that epithet he may well have secured by year’s end. His driving off the tee is nothing short of remarkable. With that long signature pause at the top of his swing he just dials up the middle of the fairway, hole after hole. Apart from 2 wins, he’s had 5 top 10 finishes so far this year and must now start as favourite for the year’s second Major, the USPGA Championship, which starts next week. Putting him ahead of Scheffler and McIlroy in the betting stakes might not make much sense to many who follow this game, but in golf, of all sports, stats don’t lie. Also in the field was Ryan Fox who’s becoming the personification of steadiness and consistency. In this event he finished 30th . Okay that won’t win him a Halberg Award this year, but up against 70 of the world’s best golfers, it was again a sterling effort from Foxy on the course they have called for decades the “Blue Monster”, 7700 yards of demanding golf which tests every aspect of your game. It’s also a course Foxy hasn’t played that often. He put together 4 rounds of par or better – 72, 71, 72, 68 and a cheque for around $NZ200,000. His finishing score was 5 under par, again a pointer to his consistency over the 4 days, but there was one hole, the 18th , which proved his nemesis - he bogeyed it every round. If he’d just parred it each day, he would have finished inside the top 10. Mind you, as tough par 4’s go, they don’t come much tougher than this one. It ranks as the 6 the hardest par 4 across all the courses played on the USPGA Tour in one calendar year. Meanwhile far away in Southern Turkey, Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori were in action again on the latest DP World Tour event. However, Hillier was seriously off his normally high-quality game and failed to make the cut by a wide margin. But the young Kobori fared infinitely better. After a second round of 68, Kazuma found himself in second place where he doggedly defied his experience at this level and stayed around the top of leaderboard, or within a shot of it, really until the back nine on Day 4. This was a tough course, evidenced by only one player the eventual winner - Mikael Lindberg from Sweden, the only player in the field to get to 10 under, winning by 2 shots. Kazuma just couldn’t get his usually highly reliable putter to fire on this last day. He only had 1 birdie and that came on the first hole. Eventually he finished in a tie for 13th place and a handy cheque for E34,000. Elsewhere, Steve Alker came up short in the second Seniors Major of the year, finishing in a tie for 11th , 9 shots behind Stewart Cink who picked up his 4th win this year from 7 starts. Yep, as Steve Alker has clearly shown, there’s still a lot of money to be won playing golf for a living in the USA even after the age of 50.

It was shaping up as a big week for our big names. Unfortunately the early sizzle quickly turned to fizzle and with Ryan Fox having a week off, what followed was a low for the likes of Lydia Ko, Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori. The biggest disappointment was the showing of Lydia. She lined up in Houston at the Chevron Championship for the first women’s Major of the year. Her form in 2026 meant she entered as one of the favourites. From her 6 starts on the LPGA Tour this year, Lydia had notched 3 top 5 finishes and a tie for 11th in her last start prior to the Chevron. She began the Championship with a solid, if not spectacular, opening par round of 72, although it did leave her whole 7 shots behind Nellie Korda, the eventual winner. Her second round began promisingly enough with 3 birdies along with 2 bogeys on the front nine. That, however, was the end of the good stuff, as golfers like to say, as she battled her way fruitlessly through the back nine where she ran up 4 bogeys, no birdies and just 4 pars. Most unlike Lydia Ko golf, it must be said. On the last hole, a par 4, Lydia was on for 2 and had about a 15-foot putt for birdie. It was a putt she knew she had to sink in order to make the cut. Alas the putt didn’t drop and she tapped in for a second round of 75, missing the cut by 1 shot. It was just the 6th time in 69 Major Championship starts that Lydia had missed the cut. Life unfortunately wasn’t much better for Daniel Hillier in the China Open, his first start on the DP World Tour since he won the NZ Open in Queenstown back in March. The long break didn’t appear to have done his game much harm as he opened with a rock-solid 68, 4 under par and comfortably inside the top 10 going into Day 2. His fate at this point unfortunately was to bear a remarkable similarity to that experienced by Lydia Ko across the other side of the Atlantic. On Day 2 he was going along nicely. At the turn he was 1 over par but two birdies on 9 and 10 got him back in touch with the leaders. Two more pars had him comfortably inside the cut when suddenly the wheels came off his round. A double bogey 6 on 14 followed by 2 bogeys on 16 and 18 saw him sign his card for 73 and a missed cut, like Lydia, by 1 shot. Daniel would have been unhappy at not playing the weekend after a long break but there was enough good stuff in those first 31 holes to suggest his best is not far off. All of which meant Kazuma Kobori was the only Kiwi out of Ko, Hillier and himself to make a cut last week. Kazuma, having just his second start after a month-long lay-off like his compatriot Daniel Hillier, began very solidly with a 2 under par 69 and followed it up with another sub-par round on Day 2 to make the cut comfortably enough. Another even par round on the third day left him in good shape for a top 20 finish but it wasn’t to be. He too lost his consistency on Day 4. His blues began on the second hole, a par 3, which saw make double bogey. He recovered well enough with 3 birdies mixed in with 2 bogeys, then disaster befell the young Kiwi when he got into all sorts of trouble on 18, having to settle for a costly and painful triple bogey 8 which inevitably saw him tumble down the leaderboard to finish in a tie for 58 h place, dropping 13 places on just 1 hole. It emphasised very clearly and painfully for young Kazuma how ruthless professional golf can be at this level.

Ryan Fox looks to have finally recovered from the travails of kidney stones which have hampered his USPGA Tour campaign for 2026. For over a month he’s been sidelined by these painful little acidic stones. They severely hindered his Masters preparation which led to him playing Augusta below his best form. It didn’t come as any great surprise to see him miss the cut, albeit narrowly. His tie for 16th place at the Heritage Classic however was a positive sign that he has his mojo back. The Heritage is known as a Signature event on the US Tour. There are only 8 of them, spread across the entire year. The fields are limited to the top 70 golfers from the previous year and offer US$20 million per tournament. Furthermore, most of those 70 players belong inside the world’s top 50. Yes, the money is good, very good, but so is the competition. Once you’re in these high-end Signature fields, the dollars mount up very quickly. Foxy, for example, earned around NZ$500,000 for his tie for 16th place at the Heritage. The addition of these lucrative events to the annual USPGA Tour schedule didn’t come about by accident nor PGA bosses feeling uncommonly generous towards their players. No, it was due entirely to the appearance of LIV Golf and the hundreds of millions of Saudi petro dollars pumped into this new breakaway Tour. Many big names like Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Bryce DeChambeau, Cam Smith and Jon Rahm switched. One could hardly criticise these players for doing so, given the size of the LIV offers - in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars just as signing-on fees, then playing for much larger purses than were then offered by the USPGA Tour. The USPGA Tour then unearthed their own bountiful reply, diving into their own reserves and arm- twisting the big sponsors to increase their sponsorship dollars. The arrival of these 20-million-dollar Signature events has clearly gone down well with top PGA Tour players, but not necessarily with many of the couple of hundred lower-ranked players who comprise the bulk of the players on this Tour. “Hey”, they’re saying, “What about us, what sort of remuneration are we getting for our loyalty?” That issue is yet to be resolved. Foxy, meanwhile, will be very pleased with this latest overall result. He certainly started like a man in a hurry. Picking up 5 birdies in his first 9 holes, 4 of them coming on consecutive holes. Sadly he couldn’t match that form on Day 2, having to settle for a 1-over 72 and losing touch with the leaders. Day 3 delivered better stuff - a 5-under 67 and a chance still of a top 20 finish. That would have happened if he had just finished on Sunday with a par on the 18th but he made bogey instead and had to slip back to a tie for 16th . With the Majors season well underway and the next one in just a few weeks’ time, the PGA Championship, Foxy’s return to form, albeit a little hurried, augurs well for the year’s second Major.

It might be something of an exaggeration to say Rory McIlroy is suddenly feasting on the rewards, records and remuneration (a mere US$4.5 million) that come from winning The Masters. However, 15 consecutive years of failure to win at Augusta hasn’t all been in vain. It was obvious last year and again this year that McIlroy has acquired a vast reservoir of what to do and what not to do around this devilishly testing course. No-one in the field of his generation has as much innate knowledge of this unique course. Yes, it’s an age-old sporting cliché that you can learn much from your failures. Rory’s two final rounds were the clearest example I can think of where a golfer has leaned on his past experiences to finally climb to the top. After leading the field by 6 shots at the halfway stage Rory, 22 holes later, had given back all those 6 shots to the field, then when he missed a 3-foot putt on his way to a double bogey, his hopes now for a second straight green jacket looked to have died on the glassy greens of Augusta this day. Another bogey 2 holes later seemed to confirm that Rory was in the throes of letting slip another Masters. Past adversity told him, unfortunate though these two lapses were, 14 under would probably win this thing. That meant no more bogeys and 5 birdies had to be found over those final 12 holes. His mind this time was clear and his thought process logical. The results were immediate - birdies on the next two holes meant he was back on the horse. He was looking more like the Rory of Thursday and Friday. Then came the pivotal moment on the par 3 12th . He pulled a pitching wedge out of his bag and sent his ball sailing high and serenely over Rae’s Creek and landed it 6 or 7 feet from the hole. Fate and momentum combined sweetly as he poured the putt into the hole. From that moment on you sensed nobody now would stop the Irishman. He stood on the 18th tee soon after with a 2-shot lead, grabbed his 3-wood and, as he sensed the title was surely his now, lashed out at his ball, opening wide the club face which sent the ball arcing right into the thick stand of trees halfway up the 18th fairway. Fate had dealt him one final fortunate twist. He had a shot, even though another crop of tall trees obscured his view of the green. It didn’t matter. He ripped a short iron over the trees and into a greenside bunker. That was just fine. He duly popped the ball onto the green, took his two putts and became only the 4th player to win back- to-back Masters titles. The other three? Jack Nicklaus of course, Tiger Woods of course and the incomparable Sir Nic Faldo. While Rory was making more history, Scottie Scheffler reminded us all why he is still the Number One ranked golfer. He trailed McIlroy by 13 shots after 36 holes, but finished the tournament just 1 shot adrift of the winner. Scheffler became the first player in the 91-year history of The Masters to play the final 2 rounds without a bogey. He rightly, I guess, remains Number One and Rory stays at Number Two. The former, the world’s best golfer, the latter the most loved. Golf is very fortunate to have these two superstars leading the way. Sadly, the lingering side effects of kidney stone extractions conspired against Ryan Fox who went into this important golfing week with only two competitive rounds to his name in the month prior. To his credit, Ryan’s staunch determined mannerisms nearly got him into the weekend. He missed a 3-foot putt on the 34th hole and so missed the cut by 1 shot.

The golf calendar’s most awaited week has arrived. The Masters. As Ryan Fox, no longer a Masters rookie, observed a few days ago, “It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve played Augusta, every time you enter through the gates and take the drive up Magnolia Lane to the clubhouse, it’s a goose bump experience”. Ryan, unfortunately, could hardly have been more ill-prepared, after being laid low a month ago with kidney stones. Since then he’s only played two rounds of competitive golf. He is now thankfully an experienced world-class golfer and won’t be making excuses for this severely limited game time he’s had since the beginning of March. He’ll be relying on his bulldog spirit and fierce determination to get him through what will be a tough week for him. Just making the cut will be an achievement in itself. Due to the limited size of the field, usually around 90 to 95, the cut is made at 50. In other words, only the top 50 progress to play the final two rounds and that will be Foxy’s first aim. Again, in another piece of bad luck for Foxy, the 10-shot rule was removed a decade or so back. Under this rule, all players who were within 10 shots of the lead, regardless of their position, qualified for the last two rounds. So who is likely to win? Scottie Scheffler, the world’s Number One despite an indifferent year to date by his standards, or Rory McIlroy, the defending champion with 44 wins worldwide to his name? An elite American golf betting handicapper, Brady Kannon, who’s called eight Major winners since 2013 and whose most recent success came just a couple of weeks ago when he correctly predicted Matt Fitzpatrick paying 15-1 to win the Valspar Championship, is only revealing his choices to those who sign up to his betting website. However among popular betting sites, favouritism is fairly evenly shared between Scheffler, McIlroy and two LIV golfers, John Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau. DeChambeau has acquired the knack, over the last couple of years, of peaking in the Majors. So he’s my bet. I’ll be surprised if he’s not in the hunt when it comes to the back nine on the last day. Augusta’s back nine is very gettable. There are 2 par 5’s reachable in 2 and 2 magnificent par 3’s which can be birdied as well. If you can get on a tear at the start of the last nine you can shoot up to near the top of the leaderboard very quickly. It’s part of the enduring and addictive charm of The Masters. Missing from the field this year are Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson who have won 8 Green jackets between them. If you’re picking a non-American winner that might be a savvy bet. There are 46 foreign golfers in the field this year out of a field of 94. Meanwhile in Las Vegas, Lydio Ko missed out on yet another top 10 finish by 1 stroke when she tied for 11th place at the Aramco Championship, but overall she continued her good consistent form in 2026. It was however a bit of a rough ride for Lydia who opened with rounds of 75 and 76, seeing her just make the cut and in a tie for 59th place after 2 rounds. Then the next day Lydia, as she is prone to do, went out and shot a 68 to record the lowest round of the day and jump 44 places up the leaderboard.

Shooting a score of 60 in any tournament, be it as an amateur or a top professional, is a moment of unalloyed joy which very few golfers experience at any time in their career. Yet both New Zealand’s top two golfers, Ryan Fox and Lydia Ko, have joined this elite club this year. Ryan Fox, playing in a charity event prior to starting his 2026 overseas playing schedule, wheeled out a 10-under par 60 on the Akarana Golf course in Auckland, setting a new course record that will now require a piece of golfing history to lower. Then Lydia turned up last week, showing us all that anything Foxy can do, she can match. Playing in the Ford Championship in Arizona, Lydia blasted a 12-under par opening round of 60 - 12 birdies and 6 pars. Off the top of my head, I can’t recall another round of golf at this level in either the men’s or women’s game which contained 12 birdies. Amazing. Now while Lydia wasn’t able to get close to that 60 in any of her final three rounds, H-J Kim, second to Lydia after her first round, then went out and carded yet another 61 in her third round. Again I can’t remember any golfer in a PGA Tour event at this level with 2 61’s on their card in the same tournament. With absolutely no disrespect to either Lydia or H-J, this was by no means the toughest course these women will encounter this year. A further indication of how easy this course was playing can be seen by the fact that not one player who finished in the top ten shot over par. Every round of those top ten was under par. I think if I were living in Arizona I’d be beating a path as quickly as possible to that club to get a membership. H-J Kim, not surprisingly, went on to win the tournament, finishing with a four-round score of 260, 28 under par. Lydia, with final rounds of 71, 69 and 68, finished 4 th , picking up a cheque of around NZ$170,000. Interestingly, Lydia with that 60 recorded her lowest-ever round in professional golf and it tied as the second lowest in the history of the LPGA Tour. Her career earnings now top US$21 million, leaving her just US$1 million shy of Annika Sorenstam’s record for the most money won by a woman in professional golf. Unfortunately the news from our elite men over the weekend was nowhere near as bright. Ryan Fox, in his first outing back since being sidelined with kidney stones, failed to make the cut at the Texas Open and now has just one more tournament left before The Masters starts at Augusta on 9 April. And Kazuma Kabori, the very personification of consistency on the DP World Tour from week to week, was again initially showing this strength of his game in the Indian Open with rounds of 71, 71, and 70, all under par through 54 holes, then one disaster after another befell the young Kiwi on Day 4. His troubles started on the 2nd hole with a bogey, followed by a double on the very next hole, then a double catastrophe on 8 and 9 - a double bogey followed by a triple bogey 7 on the 9th for an outward 9 of 44, 8 over the card. Kazuma managed to stem the bleeding on the back nine, playing the first even holes in even par, only to stumble badly on the two closing holes - a double bogey 6 on 17 followed by another double bogey on the par 5 18th . So out it in 44 and home in 40 for a 12- over par 84 which left him in a tie for 50th place. Did he sustain some sort of injury early in his round which caused this unusual slump? Nothing has emerged at the time of writing to suggest anything was wrong with him physically. However his driving, such a strength of his game, was well off on Day 4. He hit only 50% of fairways well, below his usual 70–80%. As a result he only hit 27% of greens in regulation. Clearly something was not right. Did he just have a mental meltdown after things started to go wrong? We may get a clearer picture later this week. If he doesn’t start this week, we can assume he is probably carrying some sort of injury.

Steve Alker hasn’t been very visible on the Seniors’ Tour in the United States this year for a very good reason. He’s been Down Under visiting his home country preparing for and playing in the NZ Open in Queenstown. No sooner was he back in the States than he quickly got back to his winning ways, picking up his 11th win on this Tour and probably his most spectacular. At the halfway stage Alker was 9 shots off the lead but over the weekend he shot 62 then 65 to force a playoff with Padraig Harrington. Steve won on the first hole of sudden death with a 14-foot birdie putt. As remarkable as his comeback was, the fact is that this was Alker’s 100th event as a Senior and astonishingly he has never missed a cut, yes 100 starts for 100 cuts. That takes my breath away. The Middle East has in recent years become an increasingly important arm of international golf. Its significance is especially relevant to the DP World Tour. A number of high-profile, big-moneyed events take place in the United Arab Emirates across late January and into February. Good fortune indeed was on their side this year as their four DP World events finished just 10 days before US and Israeli fighter jets took to the skies over the Middle East and carpet-bombed military, political and nuclear weapons’ factories in Iran. The DP World Tour had just begun its African Swing when the bombs started to fall in the Middle East. The UAE unfortunately has become a regular target for Iranian missiles due to what Iran perceives as a nation with close economic ties to the United States. Since then, all regular activities from international sporting events to air travel have been thrown into chaos. Formula One Grand Prix for example has been cancelled or at least postponed until such time as the fighting ceases. Meanwhile, life continues on, albeit rather prosaically in the golfing world. Ryan Fox is still recovering from the removal of kidney stones and hopes to play at least one tournament in the USA before the Masters begins at Augusta on 9 April. Two Koboris were in action over the past week. Kazuma in China and his older sister Momoka at the Australian PGA Championship in Queensland, won by Aussie Hannah Green, now a winner in her last 3 starts. It was also a very good week for our two leading players on the Ladies European Tour. Amelia Garvey finished in a tie for 5 th place which earned her A$20,000 and further back in a tie for 36th place was Momoka Kobori whose golf had been a model of consistency for the first 3 rounds, only for her to stumble badly on the front nine on the last day. Four bogeys and a double on this nine saw her turn in 43 and forgo any chance of a really big pay day. To Momoka’s credit she fared 10 shots better on the back nine to finish with a 76 - out in 43, home in 33. After three very good weeks in Australia, where all the tournaments were part of the European Tour, Momoka now sits in 22nd place on the Order of Merit. To retain her playing card for next year she must finish the year inside the top 70. Amelia Garvey is in an even stronger position now, sitting in 10th spot on that all-important Order of Merit. Momoka’s brother Kazuma suffered a similar sort of fate to Momoka while playing in the Hainan Classic in China. After three good consistent rounds, Kazuma lost touch with the leaders on the final day with 3 bogeys marring his card, seeing him finish in a tie for 34th place.

Eerie echoes of the unpleasantries which marred the closing holes of last year’s Ryder Cup in New York surfaced again, albeit not so menacingly, over the dramatic final holes of the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Florida this past weekend. Cameron Young and Matt Fitzpatrick, opponents in that Ryder Cup of 2025, were duelling for the Players title. While there was only friendliness between the two players, boos and jeers were nonetheless aimed fairly and squarely at the Englishman, especially after Young grabbed a share of Fitzpatrick’s lead with a birdie on the famous par 3 17th hole. Then came that unfortunate chorus, “USA USA USA”, as the masses made their way up the 18 th fairway. During a moment of silence, while waiting for Young to hit his ball off the tee, some perhaps religiously misguided soul screeched “God Bless America”. Maybe he thought things weren’t going so well for Team USA in the Middle East. In the end the lone cry seemed more comic than tragic. Young appeared delightfully indifferent to the verbal sideshow as he unleashed a 375-yard drive(343 metres) up the 72nd hole, reputed to be the longest drive on this hole since the Shot Link telemetry was introduced at Sawgrass in 2003. It was also close to 20 metres longer than Rory McIlroy’s drive earlier in the day. It set up an easy par 4 for Young, while Fitzpatrick, after missing the fairway off the tee, could do no better than a bogey 5, leaving the quietly-spoken, likeable American the winner by 1 shot and US$4.5million richer. Sadly Ryan Fox took no part in this high-profile event due to a kidney stone which laid him low the day before the tournament started. He was admitted to a local hospital where he had the stone lasered, for the most part a largely pain-free procedure, but it will be a week or so before he’s back to full fitness. He did message me to say he’s very hopeful he will be able to play in the year’s first Major which gets underway on 9 April at Augusta. Also missing from any action over the past week were Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori with the DP World Tour having a week’s break while its schedule shifts from Africa to Asia. Both Kiwis should be in the line up in Hainan, China for the Hainan Classic starting 19 March. However the Kobori name was not entirely out of the golfing frame last week with Kazuma’s sister, Momoka Kobori, recording one of her best finishes on the Ladies European Tour which stopped Down Under to embrace the Australian Women’s Open at the Kooyonga course in Melbourne. Like her younger brother, Momoka was a model of consistency, recording rounds of 73, 72, 71, and 68 to finish in a tie for 7th place and a cheque close on $NZ30,000. This high finish has seen her move above the other NZer on this tour, Amelia Garvey. Kobori now sits in 17th place on the Order of Merit, a couple of spots ahead of Garvey who also played in the Aussie Open finishing in a tie for 34th . Both players will head for Hope Island in Queensland for the Australian PGA Championship. It’s the last of three tournaments in Australia which form part of an increasingly global look about this women’s Tour which, despite its title, reaches into most quarters of the golfing world, rather like the men’s DP World Tour.

Daniel Hillier’s much-coveted win in the New Zealand Open at Millbrook not only restored faith in the standard of NZ golf, but also thankfully brought an end to the long and continuous domination Australian golfers have had on our National Open. However, a week later, normal Australian transmission, as it were, has resumed with Australians not just edging out the Kiwis, but a strong contingent of Japanese golfers as well at the Japan-Australasian Tour Championship. Aussies filled six of the top ten places and two of them, Travis Smyth and Jack Thompson, then went on to battle it out over a 6-hole sudden death play-off. Eventually Smyth snapped the deadlock to claim first prize in this $1million tournament. The best of the Kiwis was the ever-consistent Kazuma Kobori who finished in a tie for 6th at 12 under par for the week, 3 shots behind the eventual winner. Unlike last week, Kobori was the only Kiwi to finish in the top 10. Nic Voke was the best of the rest of the Kiwi line-up, tying for 11th place. Then came a relatively new name on the Kiwi golfing scene, 25-year-old Aucklander Cameron Harlock, who rocketed home with 6 birdies and 7 1-putt greens on the back nine on Sunday to grab a share of 15th place. Harlock has been on a golfing scholarship in America and has now turned pro. And if his putter continues to run as hot as it did at Middlemore, we’ll be hearing and seeing a lot more of this guy in years to come. Kerry Mountcastle, 3rd at Millbrook last week and handy to the lead at Auckland through the first 3 rounds, lost his touch on the last day, carding 5 bogeys on his way to an even par round of 71. Those bogeys saw him slip to a share of 35th place alongside fellow Kiwi Michael Hendry. Meanwhile Ryan Fox enjoyed another useful pay day on the USPGA Tour, pocketing US$157,000 for his share of 26th place at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in Florida. Ryan had a share of 6th place after an opening round of 68, 3 under par. The following day he shot his first over par round in 3 tournaments on the PGA Tour this year. His consistent golf this year can clearly be measured by shooting 10 rounds in a row under par. Unfortunately, a 3-over par round on Day 3 saw him slip back into the middle of the field. An improved final round saw him climb up into a tie for 24th place. Those 2-over par rounds have seen him drop 5 places on the FedEx Cup rankings. He now sits at 34th place, still well inside that all important top 70. The tournament at Arnie’s place produced a riveting finish. Daniel Berger had led the tournament for the first 60 plus holes, only to see Akshay Bhatia reel off 4 birdies on the back nine to force a sudden play-off, won by Bhatia on the first extra hole.

If you were surprised at the unabashed joy streaming out of the face and body of Daniel Hillier after he sank his last putt on the 72nd hole at Millbrook to win the NZ Open, well here’s why. For the last couple of years, golf writers and commentators have been perplexed as to why this top Kiwi golfer hasn’t added a second win to his sole DP World victory in 2023, the highly significant British Masters. It is one of the most sought-after titles in Europe after the Open Championship. The NZ Open no longer forms part of the DP World Tour, so Hillier’s win in Queenstown won’t see him shoot up the world rankings or even improve his place on the DP World Tour rankings. But he was overjoyed with this win for all sorts of reasons as he let his emotions out on that 18th green. Much of the talk before the Open started was around whether a Kiwi could at last win this title and end this depressing Australian stranglehold on our national Open. Hillier was acutely aware of this domination which added to his determination to become the first Kiwi since 2017 to be crowned the winner. The stats unfortunately speak for themselves and show why Hillier and others from here were desperate to snap this Aussie run. Basically, Aussies have colonised this event for the past quarter of a century. An Aussie golfer has been declared the winner of the NZ Open 13 times since 2001. During that same period we recorded only one NZ victory and that was Michael Hendry in 2017. In 2012, for heaven’s sake, even Aussie amateur Jake Higginbottom was good enough to take out the title, besting the best we could put into the field that year. Yet oddly enough, during the late ‘90s and the first two years of this century, it was a Kiwi who triumphed every year from 1996 until 2002. Winners include Michael Campbell, Greg Turner and David Smail. It was a victory richly deserved by Hillier whose game from tee to green was the best of any player in the field. Long and accurate off the tee, comfortably over 300 yards with his driver. Precise, accurate iron play set up many birdie opportunities and then there was his very hot putter which possibly turned out to be the most lethal club in his bag. All up Daniel needed just 119 putts to complete the 4 rounds, that’s an average of less than 30 putts per round. In total he had 30 1-putt greens and on Day 1, he 1-putted every green on the front 9. These are quite phenomenal statistics. I sense a second win on that DP World is not far away. Hillier wasn’t the only Kiwi to stand out at Millbrook. For starters 12 NZ golfers qualified for the final two days, one of the highest numbers of Kiwis to make the cut for many years, if my memory serves me correctly. Kerry Mountcastle, for example, was near to the top, if not alone at the top of the leaderboard at various times over the last two days. He hung tough on Day 4 in very windy conditions, helped also by a very good display of putting which saw him come home in a tie for 3 rd place and a cheque close to $100,000, possibly the biggest pay day in his professional career. All told 5 NZers finished in the top 20. After Hillier and Mountcastle came Michael Hendry tied for 10th , Sam Jones 14th and Kazuma Kobori in 19th place. So with 12 Kiwis making the cut, 5 finishing inside the top 20 and Daniel Hillier winning the title, this has been by far the most successful NZ Open for many many years. It should augur well for a lot more success offshore for our top golfers in the years to come.

Across opposite sides of the world last weekend, Ryan Fox and Lydia Ko showed emphatically why they are our two most successful and celebrated golfers. Competing against most of the world’s best, each produced golf of the highest quality. It would not have come as a great surprise if either had kicked on for a victory. Each was in the hunt for a title but neither could go low enough on the last day to notch up a win. However both finished comfortably inside the top 10 of their respective tournaments. Together their combined scores totalled 32 under par. Each player posted 4 rounds in the 60’s. Now here’s where it gets interesting. Fox and Ko could well team up and compete for a gold medal in a new Mixed Team event that’s been added to the golf schedule at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Sure, 2028 is a long way off and Lydia has spoken about retiring from the game by the time she reaches 30 and that’s in April this year. However her form in 2026 on the LPGA Tour suggests to me she may be having second thoughts about an imminent retirement. That strong competitive element, such a hallmark of her career, looks to be alive and well, very well in fact, in 2026. Last week in Thailand she finished 4th in the Thailand Honda LPGA, reeling off rounds of 67, 64, 69, 68, hardly the sort of golf you’d be turning in if you’re retiring in two months. Meanwhile Foxy joined the swinging 60’s party with rounds of 67, 69, 69 and 67 at the Genesis Invitational at the Riviera Golf Club in Los Angeles, which just so happens to be the club that will host the golf competition at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Foxy finished in a tie for 7th place, winning US$602,000. He jumped 35 places on the FedEx Cup table after this LA performance and now ranks 24th . Only the top 50 on the USPGA Tour at season’s end qualify for the rich FedEx Cup series. But it was anything but a laid-back week for many of New Zealand’s up and coming crop of young pros. Most of them were at the iconic Paraparaumu links playing in the NZPGA Championship which was dominated by golfers from Australia. Oddly enough it was a visitor from the USA, 30-year-old Truslow Austen, who took out the major prize and took home the handsome trophy that goes to the winner. All eyes now switch from Paraparaumu to Queenstown for the 2026 NZ Open which starts on Thursday, 26 February. Once again John Hart and his team have attracted a very strong field for this NZ Open which carries a purse of NZ$2million dollars in prizemoney. The Kiwi challenge will be headed by Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori, our two leading DP World Tour professionals. Also in the field are two USPGA Tour winners, Kevin Na, a 5-time winner on the USPGA Tour, who appears to have severed his ties with LIV Golf and hopes to regain his playing rights on the US Tour. Also from the USA comes Kyle Stanley, twice a winner on the US Tour. Another Kiwi with strong credentials of late is Ben Campbell, the New Zealander enjoying a very profitable period on the LIV Golf Tour. All up there’s no doubt about this year’s Open - it’s one of the most competitive NZ Opens we’ve seen for many years. A tournament which Aussie pros by and large have tended to dominate in recent years, but this year it could be a very different story. Let’s hope there are Kiwis on the front page of the leaderboard coming down the stretch at Millbrook on Sunday afternoon.

When you’re one of the world’s best golfers with two Majors to your name, going 848 days without a win of any kind would, you’d expect, prompt a raft of pessimistic thoughts to rattle around in your head. Not so said Collin Morikawa after breaking that two-and-a-half-year drought with victory in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the Monterey Peninsula in California. He was always sure he would win again and was good enough to believe he could, even against the best. The Pebble Beach Pro-Am is one of the high-flying events on the US Tour. Being a Pro-Am it brings together Hollywood celebrities, sporting stars, business tycoons and the game’s best golfers. Eighteen of the world’s top 20 were at Pebble Beach this year, along with the likes of Ryan Fox. Morikawa’s win was built around a 10 under par 62 on the third day, a round which included 11 birdies. Even that eye-popping display still left him two shots off the lead going into the last round. He was able to continue his good form into the last day and as the leaderboard bunched up with four players at one stage tied for the lead midway through the last round, it was Morikawa who prevailed with his sound game from tee to green and saw him edge out his closest rivals by 1 shot when he birdied the par 5 18th . For all the plaudits that deservedly went Morikawa’s way there was almost as much admiration, bordering almost on disbelief, at the performance of Scottie Scheffler who almost completed one of the greatest comebacks of all time. After the first round, Scheffler, the world’s undisputed leading golfer, was right near the tail of the field after an opening round of 72 which left him 10 shots behind the leader and in 62nd place. At one stage during the second round he slipped to 11 shots off the lead. Rather like Morikawa’s ‘never give up’ attitude, Scheffler’s mind mirrored similar thoughts. A 6 under 66 on Day 2, then a 5 under 67 narrowed the deficit to 8 shots which in Scheffler’s own words meant he just went out there on the last day and ‘free-wheeled it’ and with spectacular success, reeling off 6 birdies and 3 eagles, yes 3 eagles in the one round. It was nothing short of spectacular. He also clocked up 3 bogeys, but when he walked off the 18 th green and signed for a 9 under 63 he had a share of the lead. Unfortunately for Scheffler, Morikawa’s strong finish saw him pip his fellow American on the last hole. Almost as spectacular was Rory McIlroy’s final round - an 8 under 64 - 8 birdies, 10 pars, no blemishes. Scheffler and McIlroy are officially the world’s top two golfers and although neither managed to win at Pebble Beach this day, they showed why they are nonetheless the world’s two best. Ryan Fox, it should be added, certainly didn’t disgrace himself in such exulted company. After an even par 72 on Day 1, which left him tied with Scheffler in 62nd place, Foxy then hung tough for the final three rounds with some very classy golf. An 8 under 64 on Day 2 and 69 on each of the last two days saw him finish in a tie for 24th place with a cheque for around NZ$225,000. All up Foxy recorded 22 birdies across the four days. I’m assuming he will tee it up down the road in San Diego this week for the next US$20 million Signature tournament where every competitor is assured a big pay day because there’s no cut. Every golfer plays four rounds.

Some 6 or 7 years ago Patrick Reed, after one of his wins on the USPGA Tour, casually dopped into a post-round interview that he was now “One of the world’s top 5 golfers”. The problem was that the Official World Golf rankings said otherwise and had him ranked just inside the top 20. Call it ignorance or arrogance but it’s just the way Reed has always operated. Love him or leave him Patrick Reed has a unique way of making his mark on international golf. After winning the 2018 Masters Reed’s form seemed to desert him, not helped by his on-course behaviour which saw a number of cheating allegations levelled his way. Brooks Koepka incidentally nicknamed him Sand Castles after Reed was accused some years back of sweeping sand away from behind his ball in a bunker. For all the bad press Reed has attracted, American golfing fans have always loved him, especially for his Ryder Cup heroics. Who can forget his epic singles win against Rory McIlroy a decade or so ago which earned the surly American the title of Captain America? Well ‘Capt A’ seems to have rediscovered his best form and it’s come coincidentally shortly after cutting his ties with LIV Golf. From his last 3 starts on the DP World Tour he’s recorded 2 wins and a second placing, the latter coming after he lost a sudden death playoff. This remarkable run of form has ironically seen Reed propel himself back just inside the top 20 on the World Rankings. LIV Golf, as the saying goes, probably isn’t amused. Mind you, LIV Golf has been getting a bit more publicity than usual with the victory of 23-year-old Australian Elvis Smyllie in Saudi Arabia. He was also a member of the winning team in the same event. All up this young Aussie pocketed US$4.75 million for his 72 holes. Not a bad week’s work for a young bloke who had never won a golf tournament outside Australia. The good news for LIV is that the next stop on their world circuit is Adelaide which has always attracted by far the biggest crowds of any LIV tournament. At the Saudi event Ben Campbell finished 30th and fellow Kiwi Danny Lee in a tie for 41st . Daniel Hillier I suspect wasn’t quite as upbeat as Patrick Reed was with himself or his golf after his final round at the Qatar Masters. The Kiwi started the last day just 3 shots behind Reed. After a solid enough start with pars on his first 2 holes, his tee shot on the 190-metre par 3 3rd missed the green, a poor second was followed by a 3-putt green for a double bogey, two holes later on the 5th he made bogey and all chances of victory had effectively disappeared. Out in 39, 3 over par, he improved slightly on the back nine where he had 3 birdies but also 3 bogeys and when he walked off the 18th he had slipped from 4th place to a tie for 20th . However he still maintains his 5th place on the Road to Dubai. Better news however from Kazuma Kobori whose golf at Qatar was the personification of consistency. He began the week with a 5 under par 67 then followed it with three rounds of 70 to finish the tournament in a tie for 9th place. This will have done young Kaz the world of good. Coming off a highly successful first year on this Tour in 2025, he’d missed the cut in his first 2 tournaments this year. After this top 10 finish his confidence I’m sure will be back. He also picked up E44,000 or close to NZ$100,000 and jumped 54 places on the Road to Dubai where he now sits in 86th place. Ryan Fox meanwhile completed his first tournament of the year on the USPGA Tour. Competing in the Phoenix Open in Arizona in front of crowds of hundreds of thousands at this riotous event, Ryan turned in a classic Foxy 4-rounder, a giddy amalgam of birdies and bogeys. Fortunately the birdies out-ranked the bogeys by 8 and saw him finish in a tie for 24th , earning US$82,000. The tournament was won by this fast-rising American sensation Chris Gottterup who beat off Hideki Matsuyama on the first hole of sudden death. It was Gotterup’s second win of the season.

All eyes were on one player at the Farmers Insurance in San Diego, the latest event on the USPGA Tour. In the end Brooks Koepka didn’t even come close to winning in this his comeback appearance on the US Tour after leaving LIV Golf just before Christmas. His form was way short of the commanding figure he cut when winning his five Majors before leaving for the big dollars of LIV Golf. However the 35-year-old American showed glimpses of his former self when he put together a much-needed 4 under par 68 on Day 2 which enabled him to just make the cut and play the weekend. He said afterwards he’s never been comfortable on the San Diego poa annua greens. Inevitably, given his past record, public expectations are high that he can recapture the sort of form that had him the Number One ranked golfer in the world. His recent form on the LIV Tour has been patchy at best. However, now that he’s back in the cut and thrust of weekly golf on the PGA Tour, his game will improve, I have no doubt about that. Koepka thrives on regular competition. That’s one of the chief reasons he made the switch back to the PGA. Playing one largely insignificant tournament a month in a different part of the world just didn’t fire his competitive juices. Having the likes of Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy lurking around when he plays now will surely see his stocks rise. Hundreds gathered around his final green at San Diego, watching him putt out for a tie of 56th place. But typical Koepka, when asked when he will play next, he said, “Arizona this coming week. I just love the chaos”. Meanwhile Justin Rose continued his good form from 2025 and proved to be a runaway winner in this latest PGA Tour event in San Diego. It was virtually a done deal after Rose’s opening round of 62, 10 under par. He never really relinquished that big lead over the next three days. His 6-shot lead midway through the tournament was the largest 2 nd round lead by any golfer since 2008. Not bad for a 45-year-old. With his win in San Diego by 7 shots he moves up to 4th on the world rankings. He was the first golfer for 71 years to go wire to wire, for this his 13th tour victory on the US Tour. Kiwis in various parts of the world came to the fore over the past weekend. Daniel Hillier once again came close to entering the winner’s circle on the DP World Tour, this time at the Bahrain Championship. A final round of 66, 6 under par, left him just 1 shot short of making a play-off with three other golfers including Patrick Reed, winner last week in Dubai. The Kiwi did however have the satisfaction of shooting the lowest round of the day. His driving over the four rounds ranked second, as well he was third in Greens in Regulation, second most accurate off the tee and inside the top 10 in putting. He’s now had 3 top 5 finishes in his last four events and as one of the English television commentators observed, “this man is a walking bank”. This latest performance has lifted his earnings on this tour to E520,000. That’s in excess of NZ$1 million dollars and it’s only the first week of February. His ranking on the Race to Dubai also got a little bump, moving up to 5th place. Lydia Ko looked likely to be among the big dollars as well in her first appearance in 2026 on the LPGA Tour in Florida. But it wasn’t to be. Playing on her home course in the Tournament of Champions which was reduced to a 54-hole tournament because bad weather washed out Saturday’s play, Lydia was up there near the top of the leaderboard through the first two rounds. Unfortunately a horror back nine on Day 3 took her out of contention. Three bogeys and a double bogey saw her card 40 on the back nine and left her 7 shots adrift of the eventual winner Nelly Korda. Lydia shot 74 on the last day. However her 4th place in this her first up appearance for 2026 is nonetheless a very encouraging start to the year. In April, Lydia turns 30 and for some years now she’s indicated she doesn’t envisage herself playing competitive golf beyond 30, so this may well be her last year on tour. Closer to home it was a great week for the young Kiwi pro Jimmy Zheng who finished 2nd at the Webex Players Series event in Australia, picking up a cheque in the vicinity of $30,000. Not bad for a 21-year-old who only turned pro last May after winning the Australian PGA Tour Qualifying School event. Jimmy shot a final round 65 to finish only 1 shot behind the winner, Haydn Barron.

Controversy has been the constant companion of the man who won last week’s rich Dubai Desert Classic. Thirty-five-year-old Patrick Reed beat off a world class field including Rory McIlroy, Tyrell Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood, Ryan Fox, Dustin Johnson and Padraig Harrington. It was Reed’s first win on the DP world Tour since 2020. He also won nine times on the USPGA Tour before joining the LIV Golf circuit in 2023. One of those nine victories was the 2018 US Masters. But throughout his professional career Reed has been dogged by a serious of cheating allegations. At the 2019 Hero World Challenge Reed copped a 2-stroke penalty for clearing sand behind his ball with two practice swings in a waste bunker. Reed claimed it was an accident. At the 2003 Dubai Classic controversy again arose from a shot Reed hit which became stuck in a tree. He identified the ball as his even though television replays suggested it might have been a different ball. He dismissed the controversy as a ‘non-issue’. Reed was clearly angered at these allegations, particularly the criticisms he was copping from the Golf Channel and its expert commentator Brandel Chamblee, so he filed a $750million lawsuit against Chamblee and the Golf Channel for what he claimed was damage to his reputation. The case was thrown out by the judge who then required Reed to pay the legal fees of both Chamblee and the Golf Channel. Fortunately for Reed his time at LIV Golf appears to have been free of any such controversies. Certainly the only focus on him at this recent Dubai Classic was on the quality of his golf. Here there was much to admire over the days in the desert, particularly his two mid-rounds - a 66 on Day 2 and 67 on Day 3 - which were the foundation stones he laid for his victory on Day 4. Going into the last round he held a 4-shot lead which he never surrendered. On a difficult windy day with the greens running at turbo speed he held his game together to shoot an even par round. The merit of that score can be seen in the context of what his nearest rivals were doing. Only two players out of the top 10 finishers managed to break 70, yet Reed’s even par score of 72 was till enough for him to win by 4 strokes. Reed, like a lot of the top ranked names who defected to LIV Golf, has become increasingly incensed at the refusal of the board behind the Official World Golf Rankings to grant ranking points to LIV Golf tournaments. The effect of this has seen a number of big LIV Golf names no longer eligible to play in any of the Majors because they don’t rank inside the world‘s top 50. So, annoyed by this snub, they have taken legal action but to no avail. One way round this ranking points road block for LIV Golfers is to play in DP World Tour events which do attract ranking points. This route, practised regularly by Reed, has worked very neatly in his favour. He’s now ranked inside the world’s top 50 which sees him qualified to play in the four Majors this year as long as he stays inside the top 50. Most of the big names playing in Dubai had weeks they’d rather forget I’d suggest. In a field of just 100 starters Rory McIlroy finished tied for 33rd , Tommy Fleetwood a shot back was in 41st place, followed by Ryan Fox tied for 45th. Daniel Hillier did slightly better than those three big names finishing in a tie for 26th place which has seen him slip just the one place to 6th on the all-important Race to Dubai leaderboard. Hillier must finish season’s end inside the top 10 which will grant him exemption into next year’s USPGA Tour. Kazuma Kobori missed the cut by 1 shot but he was in pretty good company. Two former Major Champions, Dustin Johnston and Padraig Harrington, also came up short after two rounds and both had the weekend off.

Hello again and welcome to the New Golfing Year which is well and truly up and running with the game’s two main tours kicking off last week - the DP World Tour in the Dubai desert and the USPGA Tour in Hawaii. The Christmas break is usually the quietest week of the year on the course, but this year there was a huge story that broke off the course. Brooks Koepka startled the golfing world two days before Christmas by announcing he was quitting LIV Golf. He promptly applied to be reinstated into the USPGA who, disregarding their own rules and regulatory stand down periods, immediately welcomed Koepka back like a long-lost son. No penalties, maybe a fine, but the burly American is now set to rejoin the Tour within the next couple of weeks. Big victory for the US Tour and potentially a savage blow to the world of LIV Golf. Much more is still to be played out here. Will other superstars of the LIV stable, viz Bryson DeChambeau, John Rahm, Cam Smith and others follow suit, chucking in the LIV towel and returning to the PGA Tour? As things stand it appears those three are going to stay put. Nonetheless these are nervous times for LIV Golf who simply can’t afford to bleed any more big names. If they do, the whole LIV tent could quickly fold. Our two top golfers, Ryan Fox and Daniel Hillier, were in action in Dubai where Daniel Hillier came within a stroke of picking up his second DP World Tour win. Midway through the back 9 on the last day the Kiwi was 1 of 5 players who shared the lead which included Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry. Sadly for the two Irishmen, both strayed their tee shoots on 18 so neither was able to make par. Daniel Hillier fared better with a regulation par but that still left him one shot behind the leader Nacho Elvira, a 38-year-old Spaniard who broke the 5-way deadlock with a birdie on 17. That meant all he had to do was par the last hole which he did for a one-shot victory. However there was much to admire once again about the golf of Daniel Hillier. His 2nd place was his 4th top 6 finish from his last 5 starts which includes a 2nd , two 5ths and a 6th . For his troubles last week in Dubai he earned E258,000 - that’s just a shade over NZ$500,000. His next start is the Hero Dubai Classic which is just a 30-minute drive away. This is the tournament which saw him finish second to McIlroy last year. Another useful pay packet could be on the way for Daniel in this coming week. Also in that field will be Ryan Fox who, like Hillier, had his first competitive outing for the new year. Foxy, if nothing else, was a model of consistency. He opened the tournament with two 72’s and finished it with two 71’s for a share of 27th place. He might have missed out on the big bucks that went Hillier’s way, but at least he had the satisfaction of returning the best putting figures for the last round of the entire field - just 25 putts for his final 18. I’m sure he’ll want to see his play from tee to green this week a little more accurate though. On the USPGA Tour opener in Honolulu 25-year-old Chris Gotterup won for the third time in his short career. The 25-year-old American was ranked 195th in the world 12 months ago. Now, after this latest win and thanks to a red hot putter on the last day, he’s now the 17th ranked player in world golf.

So the curtain has come down on another golfing year. The game’s best players have put their clubs in the garage for a couple of weeks which means it’s time to dish out a few awards. Who’s really called the shots in 2025? The most prestigious award is the PGA Player Of The Year. In reality there were only two contenders for this title, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy. Normally any player good enough to best his rivals for two Majors in the same year, as Scottie Scheffler did in 2025, would be hands down the Player of the Year. But wait. What about the calendar credentials this year which belong to Rory McIlroy. His winning of The Masters in April at Augusta was quite clearly the single most memorable victory by any golfer in 2025. His win made Rory just the sixth player in history to win all four Majors and the first to do it since Tiger Woods some 20-odd years earlier. McIlroy, the game’s most popular player, had been trying in vain for a decade to win The Masters and join golf’s most exclusive club. When he sank the winning putt on the 18th green on the last day, Rory’s palpable relief was echoed by golf fans in every corner of the globe. McIlroy wasn’t done in 2025 with just that elusive Major. A few months later his other big dream and hope for 2025 was the Ryder Cup, played this year on American soil. The Europeans got the job done, thanks in no small way to the efforts of McIlroy, whose play was as sublime as it was inspirational. The win came at no small cost. In a staggering about face, McIlroy, the darling of the American galleries at Augusta, was now the villain of Bethpage, as thousands of angry New Yorkers booed, jeered and insulted the European players. Singled out for especially vindictive abuse was McIlroy. Even his wife had a drinking cup thrown at her. This was an especially dark chapter in the long history of the Ryder Cup, crowd hooliganism at big sporting events no longer, it appears, just the shameful hallmark of European football. Anyway for all of McIlroy’s triumphs it was, fittingly enough, Scottie Scheffler who took out the Player of the Year award. On tournaments won, no-one touched Scheffler. He had six wins in 2025, including two Majors. End of story. He has now won the Jack Nicklaus Player of the Year trophy four years in a row. The only other player to achieve this four straight run was, yes, Tiger Woods, who won this title every year from 1999-2003. With every win and every Major Scheffler wins these days, comparisons with Woods inevitably creep into the golfing narrative. So it’s probably worth recalling that Scheffler has so far racked up 19 US Tour wins, Tiger has 82 next to his name and 15 Majors. Back here, NZ Golf has had a very good year thanks to Ryan Fox on the USPGA Tour where he won twice in 2025 at the Myrtle Beach Classic in May, then the much sought-after Canadian Open a month later. It’s a very special club reserved for golfers winning twice or more in the one year on the US Tour, which is why Foxy’s world ranking soared during this period from around 100 to inside the top 40 and that’s about where he sits at year’s end. He's had a much-deserved long break from the rigours of life on tour. Mind you, he hasn’t exactly locked his clubs away as we saw a week or so back, winning his own ambrose event - Fox on the Run - at Royal Auckland and a week earlier playing in a charity event at this writer’s club, Akarana. He shot a course record of 60, just 11 under par. 2026, bring it on, I hear Foxy saying. Also Daniel Hillier and Kazuma Kobori had really successful seasons on the DP World Tour. As well, Lydia Ko had another really solid year on the US Ladies Tour, picking up another win but she wasn’t able to nail that 4th Major title she’s looking for. Anyway that’s my lot for 2025. It just remains for me to wish you a very happy Christmas and all the best for 2026. And make sure you enjoy your new golfing year. Remember nothing beats hitting that little white ball towards the hole!

As the curtain comes down on what has been a fairly memorable year for NZ Golf, another relatively new young face has popped up on our radar screen. His name is Jimmy Zheng and he finished 3rd on Sunday at the Victorian PGA Championship on the redoubtable Moonah Links course. In extremely difficult conditions, with howling winds buffeting the course all day, the 23-year-oldKiwi rookie pro shot a 1 under par 71, the second-best round of the final day. Indicative of the conditions was the fate of the eventual winner Marc Leishman, a 6-time winner on the USPGA Tour before he switched allegiance to LIV golf a couple of years back. Leishman is still one of Australia’s leading golfers, as he’s shown over the past two weeks at the Australian Open and the Australian PGA, but at Moonah Links on Sunday in those terrible conditions, the best he could do was a 4 over par 76 and yet that was good enough for him to win the tournament by 1 shot from fellow Australian Josh Younger, who also shot 76. A further shot back came Jimmy Zheng in a tie for 3rd place. Zheng picked up A$12,800, his best pay day to date from his short 10- tournament career. For a while late on Sunday afternoon it looked as if Jimmy’s winning score of 3 under might just get him into a play-off, as the strong swirling winds saw the leading half dozen or so players ahead of him tumble down the leaderboard. Fortunately for Leishman and Younger, the final hole at Moonah measuring 581 metres, was down wind and that saw the long-hitting Leishman make birdie and Younger par and so secure the first two finishing spots respectively. A further insight into how hard this course was playing on Sunday can be gauged from the scores of the top 20 finishers. Twelve of the field recorded rounds of 75 or worse. So take note of the name Jimmy Zheng, who said afterwards that his aim is to follow in the footsteps of Kazuma Kobori, who jumped from the Australasian PGA Tour onto the DP World Tour following a series of outstanding performances on this Aussie tour. Jimmy comes to the professional ranks with an outstanding amateur career. He won the NZ Secondary Schools Championship 7 years ago as a 16-year-old at Palmerston North Golf Club, which included a round of 60 on what was the home course of the likes of Grant Waite and Craig Perks. He was selected to represent NZ at the Youth Olympics at Buenos Aires two years later. And he represented NZ at the prestigious Asia Pacific Championships, finishing a creditable 12th among essentially the world’s best amateurs. In May of last year he won the PGA of Australasia Qualifying School. Again another significant credit to his name. And this year he’s been playing on the Australasian tour. He’s had 10 starts to date, with 2 top 5 finishes, 4th in the West Australian PGA and now a 3rd place finish at the Victorian PGA. All up he’s won around A$30,000. I’m sure he’ll command plenty of attention when he tees it up next year in the NZ Open in Queenstown, starting on 26 February. Meanwhile, faraway in every sense of the word. Lydia Ko and golfing partner Jason Day were bathing in beautiful calm Florida weather, trying to win for a second time to win the Grant Thornton International Teams title. This format sees one female and one male teaming up with 15 other teams competing in foursomes and fourball over three separate rounds. The Down Under combo of Day and Ko won this inaugural event two years ago but this year finished at the other end of the scoreboard in a tie for 13th place with three other teams. The American pair of Lauren Coughlin and Kim Novak took out the title this year, sharing the US$1million winner’s purse. Ko and Day didn’t do too badly for their 13th place though, each pocketing US$63,500.

First it was a little-known Spaniard golfer, David Puig, who a week ago upstaged Australia’s best to win the Australian PGA and this week the party-pooper, another rather anonymous figure from Europe, 26-year- old Dane Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, snatched the Australian Open title from under the nose of local hero Cam Smith when he drained a long birdie putt on the 72nd green at Royal Melbourne to win the title by 1 stroke from Smith. The Dane’s main claim to fame is the three wins he’s had on the Challenge Tour, the Number Two Tour of Europe which secured him a place on the DP World Tour. If nothing else, the wins by these two young European golfers serves to remind us that the strength of the DP World Tour isn’t quite as weak as some have suggested. Yes it’s true all of Europe’s top players are happily ensconsed on the USPGA Tour and most well reimbursed for their time playing in the States. However there is also now an underlying strength to that DP World Tour. Both Ryan Fox and Daniel Hillier will testify to that. Fox and Hillier are both winners on the DP Tour. Fox went from Europe to the States last year off the back of a couple of very successful seasons in Europe and promptly won not once but twice on the US Tour in 2025. Hillier missed his US Tour playing card a couple of weeks back by the narrowest of margins. The USPGA is clearly sufficiently impressed now with the standard of play on the DP Tour, which is why they give out full playing cards to the top ten players at season’s end. Hillier might have missed his US card for 2026, but judging by the way he’s played in recent weeks in the Middle East and now in these two Australian events, which form part of the DP World Order of Merit, he looks likely to get one of those cards this year. His 6 th place finish at Royal Melbourne has lifted him to 3rd place on the Race to Dubai Order of Merit. Again, like last week in Brisbane, Daniel had his chances on Sunday to become the first New Zealander to win the prestigious Aussie Open title. To date the best performance by a Kiwi belongs to John Lister who finished in a tie for 2nd place at the 1977 Australian Open. Standing on the 72nd tee, Hillier was just two shots adrift of joint leaders, Neergaard-Petersen and Smith. The Kiwi didn’t hold back on the 435-metre par 4 final hole at Royal Melbourne. Unfortunately his second drifted right, missed the green and ended up in a greenside bunker. Three putts on that final green saw him drop two places into a tie for 6th place. The long-hitting Kiwi has now had four top ten finishes in his last six starts. It'll be a surprise if he doesn’t find himself in the winners’ circle sometime over the next 12 months. Clearly, as his results show, he has lifted his game to another level in recent months and is now one of the leading figures on the DP World Tour. Hillier was also the best of the Kiwis at Royal Melbourne. Ryan Fox had a good week with four rounds at par or better to finish in a tie for 14 th place. If it hadn’t been for bogeys on 16 and 18 he would have nailed a top 10 finish. As it was, he finished at 7 under for the 72 holes along with Rory McIlroy. The Northern Irishman showed he’s just as popular down under as he is in Europe and the United States. Over 110,000 people flocked to Royal Melbourne over the four days, most I’m sure attracted by the prospect of seeing the world’s most popular and dynamic golfer in action. He might not have won the tournament but after a disappointing opening round with a 1 over par 72 he nonetheless played the last three rounds at 8 under with more than just the odd flash of brilliance. And the good news is he’s coming back for next year’s Open, also to be held on golf’s most celebrated peninsula. The venue will be Kingston Heath, another world-class golf course.