Sandhurst hosts Victorian PGA
BY Bruce Young | Australasian PGA Tour | 2010 Victorian PGA Championship | Preview | 09 Feb 2010
With the mainstream Australasian PGA Tour events for the summer of 2009/2010 now completed, attention reverts to what have become known as the Tour’s Tier Two events and this week once such event, the Cellarbrations Victorian PGA Championship, will be played at Sandhurst in Melbourne’s South East.
The North Course at the 36 hole Sandhurst golfing complex near Frankston at the entrance to the Mornington Peninsula, plays host and as the relatively new home of the PGA of Australia, the staging of such an event takes on an even greater significance for Sandhurst. The PGA of Australia moved from its original base in Sydney to Sandhurst three years ago and has established its administrative headquarters there.
The North Course was established in 2004 and was the creation of Melbourne based design team, Thomson and Perrett. A second course, the Champions layout, was opened three years after the North Course, again designed by Thomson and Perrett.
This week’s event is being played only 45 minutes or so north of where the co-sanctioned players Moonah Classic was played last week and, as a consequence, for an event at this level a strong field has been assembled.
New Zealander David Smail, at #123, is the highest world ranked player in the field. Smail might lead the world standings this week but a line-up of classy established and emerging Australasian players are sure to test him to the limit.
Smail started the New Zealand Open and Moonah Classic tournaments well before finishing midfield in both and, although he has not won anywhere in more than four years, he is a such a consistent performer in Japan and in Australasia, he is expected to perform well. He is definitely the only player in this field to have played three majors in 2009.
Andre Stolz is the defending champion having won the tournament twelve months ago. Then it was played at Sanctuary Lakes during a weekend that included what was to become known as Black Saturday, a day when more than 170 Victorian lost their lives in bush fires only a 100 kilometres or so to the north.
Stolz showed some good form early in last week’s Moonah Classic and if the former PGA Tour event winner was to successfully defend then few would be surprised.
Local Alistair Presnell was unable to defend his Moonah Classic title last week but in both the New Zealand Open and the Moonah Classic he showed enough to suggest that he is not far from winning form. He will play this week’s event before heading to the US to restart his Nationwide Tour campaign after narrowly missing his PGA Tour card in 2009.
Another Victorian, Stephen Allan put together a fine last round at Moonah a few days ago and finished 10th. The 2002 Australian Open Champion played well at the recent New Zealand PGA Championship also when finishing in a share of 4th and at his best is a player capable of winning an event such as this.
Recent Tier Two winners, Ashley Hall, Michael Curtain, Andrew Bonhomme, Steve Bowditch, Aaron Townsend, Leigh McKechnie, Jason Norris and Mitchell Brown are also in the field. They will be joined by the significant talents of players such as Matthew Griffin, Kurt Barnes and Scott Arnold to name but a few.
The $110,000 event gets underway on Thursday.
