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European Tour: Australian PGA Championship top 10 power rankings

By Mike Randleman

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 02: General view of the course during day two of the 2016 Australian PGA Championship at RACV Royal Pines Resort on December 2, 2016 in Gold Coast, Australia. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 02: General view of the course during day two of the 2016 Australian PGA Championship at RACV Royal Pines Resort on December 2, 2016 in Gold Coast, Australia. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images) /
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Australian PGA
RENO, NV – AUGUST 03: Curtis Luck of Australia plays his shot from the third tee during the first round of the Barracuda Championship at Montreux Country Club on August 3, 2017 in Reno, Nevada. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) /

Perhaps some thought Curtis Luck was due to get off to a faster six months since turning professional in April. The former No. 1 amateur in the world won as a 20-year-old on the PGA Tour of Australasia in May 2016, the US Amateur in August and the Asia-Pacific Amateur in October.

Winning that many prestigious tournaments is hard to dismiss as a fluke.

Luck held onto his amateur status to use his Masters exemption in April, but forwent his spot in the US Open after saying he was “excited to make money” after Augusta. He’s made his fair share of cash, but most prognosticators would have envisioned his wallet to be fatter.

Luck peaked in July with a T5 at the Quicken Loans National and followed with a T20 the week after at the Greenbrier. Other than that, he missed the cut or finished near the bottom of the pack after 72 holes in spot starts on the European Tour and PGA Tour. Subsequently, Luck had a modest Web.com Tour Finals (T19, T29, MC, MC) that now sends him to the final stage of Web Q School in December to try to improve upon his conditional status.

“I played a few events this season where I was on the edge of knowing if I was playing the next week or not,” Luck told ESPN’s Alex Malcolm. “I’d be out playing my tournament round and I would know that there was potentially a phone call waiting for me when I finished to say you’ve got to fly out tomorrow to play this.”

In the end, Luck is still a college-aged kid who is just in the infancy of his career and learning to live life as a tour professional. Once he gets into a rhythm, there’s a lot of potential to be tapped.

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