European Tour: Australian PGA Championship Preview
By Matt Coles
The European Tour returns after a week’s break on Thursday, with the Australian PGA Championship taking place at RACV Royal Pines Resort.
The Australian PGA Championship was founded in 1905 as a match play event, with Scotland’s Dan Soutar winning the very first title. He went on to win the tournament four times in the first six years that the event was held.
The tournament then became a stroke-play event in 1964, with Bill Dunk winning the title four times over a 12-year spell, adding to his sole win in the match-play format in 1962.
In the stroke play-era, only Robert Allenby has also lifted the trophy four times, winning in 2000 and 2001 and Royal Queensland, before victories at Hyatt Coolum in 2005 and 2009.
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The Australian PGA Championship became a European Tour-sanctioned tournament in 2015, and since then, three men have won the title.
The first was won by Nathan Holman in 2015, before Harold Varner III became the only non-Australian to date to lift the title, having lost out in a playoff to Holman twelve months previous.
Both the 2017 and 2018 versions of the event were won by Cameron Smith, who is looking to become the first Australian to go back-to-back-to-back at the same event, and only the fourth in European Tour history.
He will be one of the main features again this week at RACV Royal Pines, the venue hosting the tournament for the seventh straight year.
It is the 35th different venue to host the tournament, while only two other courses around the country have played host to the Australian PGA Championship (Royal Melbourne, Hyatt Coolum).
The course, situated 70km south of Brisbane, has seen some amazing golf over the last few years, and there is likely to be more again this time around.
World No.52, and two-time champion, Cameron Smith will be among the favourites for the title, along with Adam Scott, who won the title in 2013.
Johannes Veerman, who has had a solid start to life on the European Tour, could also be among the favourites for the win this week, having finished in T7 at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and T21 at the AFRASIA BANK Mauritius Open, the first two tournaments of his rookie season.
The likes of Marcus Armitage, who had a wonderful first three days in South Africa at the season-opener, and Dave Coupland, two of the English contingent to have come through Qualifying School, could also feature highly this week.
The action begins at 06:00 on Thursday morning, with the defending champion out in one of the first two groups. He plays alongside New Zealand’s Ryan Fox and American Cameron Champ for the first two days.
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Selected Tee Times (* = 10th tee start):
06:00* & 11:00: Cameron Champ (USA), Cameron Smith (AUS), Ryan Fox (NZL)
11:00 & 06:00*: Adam Scott (AUS), Min Woo Lee (AUS), Stewart Cink (USA)
11:10 & 06:10*: Johannes Veerman (USA), John Senden (AUS), Wade Ormsby (AUS)