Aussie Of The Month: Cameron Smith
And it’s Smith by a literal country mile.
For a major champion to go to places like Swan Hill on the Murray River for the New South Wales Open, two weeks after finishing T-3 at the Queensland PGA Championship at Nudgee Golf Club in Brisbane, speaks volumes of his dedication to Australian golf. The 2022 Open champion, who won just more than $16 million in prizemoney on LIV Golf alone in 2024 (excluding majors), was asked bluntly by a reporter why he was playing in the Queensland PGA, where he was grouped in the opening two rounds alongside Wesley Hinton and Kayun Mudadana (the 2024 winners of his scholarship). Smith answered by saying, “I just thought it was a great opportunity to help out the Aussie tour and then also keep the competitive reps going before the [two] big ones at the end of the year.”
Smith teed up in the NSW Open at Murray Downs Golf & Country Club, as well as the Australian PGA back in Brisbane and the Australian Open at Kingston Heath and Victoria golf clubs in Melbourne. A hat tip to the superstar for taking golf, and his Ripper GC team colours, so far afield.
Golfers In The News
Aussie of the Year?
Hannah Green [above] is the best Australian golfer this year on any tour, and it’s not close. Green triumphed during the LPGA Tour’s recent return to Asia, at the BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea. The West Australian grabbed her first wire-to-wire victory since 2019, but more importantly, her third victory of 2024. In doing so, Green joined superstars Nelly Korda and Lydia Ko as players this LPGA season to win at least three times. Green was also the first Aussie since Karrie Webb in 2006 to win at least three times in a single season. It’s hard not to imagine Green will contend for a second career major in 2025, to go with her 2019 Women’s PGA Championship breakthrough.
Golf story of the Year?
We don’t just mean Australian golf, but world golf. Point out a better palette-cleanser in golf this year than the story of Australia’s Steven “Spud” Alderson.
Taking his nickname from his love of potatoes and having grown up with some food allergies, the South Australian and member of Willunga Golf Club was in tears recently when he became the first player with autism to win a G4D Tour event.
Launched in 2022 as a partnership between the DP World Tour and EDGA, the G4D Tour was created to inspire inclusion and showcase talent on an international stage for talented golfers with disabilities.
Playing off a handicap of 1.4, Alderson shot 67 and 70 for a nine-shot victory at the G4D event in Sotogrande, Spain. Afterwards, he said on camera: “Growing up as a kid and being bullied all the time at school and even bullied at other golf clubs, it just means the world to win here,” he said at Real Club de Golf Sotogrande. The 44-year-old’s inspiring comments were heard throughout the sporting world, and he went on to tee up in a 10-strong field at the G4D Tour Series Finale in Dubai.
Spud’s caddie is Trent Blucher, a friend and mentor he met more than 20 years ago at Blackwood Golf Club. Blucher told the DP World Tour in Dubai that, “When [Spud] opened his phone after coming back from [Spain] and he realised his winner’s interview had gone viral, with the subsequent TV interviews, he didn’t look at me and ask me if I could get him a $50,000 sponsorship from Callaway, KFC or whatever. He said to me, ‘Do you think I could be an ambassador for autism?’”
Australian of the Year candidate?
Birdie Of The Month: Bravery Amid Uncertainty
One of Australia’s most talented young pro golfers, Jeffrey Guan, for stepping up and speaking candidly about his traumatic eye injury with such positivity.
Guan, 20, sat down recently with our publisher, Brad Clifton, for an exclusive interview [see page 88] to speak for the first time about his accident, which happened during the pro-am of a New South Wales Open qualifying event on the NSW South Coast in September – only two weeks after making his PGA Tour debut in California.
Six holes into his pro-am round, Guan was struck by an errant golf ball at Catalina Club while putting a club back in his bag. The force of the blow left Guan with multiple fractures to the eye socket and “catastrophic” trauma to the eyeball. Over the ensuing hours, days and weeks, Guan was operated on several times, including at the Sydney Eye Hospital, where some of the world’s leading vitreoretinal surgeons worked on saving his eye. Guan won’t know the outcome of that injury for at least another six months, while his long and very considered rehabilitation program plays out. He’s not giving up hope of playing on tour, and in the meantime, during his recovery, he’s contacted the PGA of Australia and Golf Australia to start a coaching course that will allow him to work at his own pace.
Australian golf is right behind you, Jeff.
Bogey (avoidance) of the Month? Another option emerges for Moore Park
The political decision to (eventually) scrap nine of the 18 holes at Moore Park Golf in Sydney, one of the busiest golf courses in the Southern Hemisphere, lingers as a continuous ‘Bogey of the Month’ in Australian golf.
However, a group trying to save a metaphorical par emerged in the form of the recently announced Moore Park Golf Collective. It includes Golf Australia, the PGA of Australia, Golf NSW and Moore Park Golf Club, and was formed to present an alternative solution to “transform Moore Park South into a vibrant, world-class recreational and golf facility”.
The collective submitted an alternative proposal to the NSW Government during its consultation process in April for Moore Park Golf. At the core of the new proposal is a multi-level, 500-space carpark “cleverly built” into the landscape as well as a golf course that retains an 18-hole layout but with a reduced par of 68. There would be a mini-golf course, a practice putting green and a practice chipping area as well as a shortened, high-tech driving range with more bays.
The proposal also lays out plans for several public spaces added to the area, including: an adventure playground, nature play space, dog park, barbecue and picnic facilities, fitness trail, football oval, skate park, half courts and a futsal court, as well as a BMX pump track and riding zone plus kilometres of walking, running and cycling paths.
It’s a constructive submission and well done to those who thought outside of the square and came up with a better approach. Let’s hope it plays out.
Images: Getty; Dave Tease
