The John Jones Steel Harewood Open starts today at the Greg Turner designed Harewood Woodlands course, and has attracted one of the best professional fields in the history of the tournament.  Elsewhere, Ryan Fox resumes his European campaign in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, and Liv Cheng has a last chance at a 2018 LPGA Card in the season-ending Symetra Tour Championship.


John Jones Steel Harewood Open


This $50,000 Charles Tour event is the first in the 2018 series for the Jennian Homes Trophy, played for over five tournaments culminating in the Muriwai Open in April 2018.  Last year’s winner Gareth Paddison will be teeing it up at Harewood today, and has plenty of serious opposition to contend with, including Mark Brown, Brad Shilton, Kieran Muir, Doug Holloway, David Klein and Harry Bateman.  The possibilities don’t end there though, as based on recent form Dongwoo Kang, Luke Toomey, Hayden Beard, Martin Pettigrew and NZ Professional Champion John Bae would all have to come into consideration as well.


But wait- there’s more, with a “blast from the past” theme around Richard Lee, David Smail and 2003 NZ Open Champion Mahal Pearce, who is teeing it up in a professional tournament for the first time for some years.  He’s sure to have put in plenty of preparation time down at Balmacewan, and there will be much interest in how he goes.


Weather is normally a factor in at least one round of the Harewood Open, and with the tournament starting three weeks earlier than normal, is bound to have some influence this year.  However, the tradeoff is that the scheduling works well for a number of our PGA Tour of Australasia players, as reflected in the excellent field.


You can follow the scoring at www.golf.co.nz


European Tour


Ryan Fox will be playing the Old Course at St Andrews in Round 1 of the iconic Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, before moving on to Carnoustie (the 2018 Open Championship venue), Kingsbarns, and then hopefully the concluding round back at the Old Course.


Ryan performed very well in the 2015 Open Championship at St Andrews in conditions likely to be very similar to those this week, even though it was supposedly the Scottish “summer” back then.


As usual, the field is one of the strongest on the European Tour, with Rory McIlroy in particular looking to extract something from what has been a disappointing 2017 season by his standards.


Coverage of the Links Championship is on SS 51 from 1.00am Friday morning.


 


 


 


Symetra Tour


Liv Cheng made a promising move early on in last week’s Symetra Tour event, but eventually finished T14 after a last round of 75.  That left her 22nd on the OOM, with total earnings of just on $NZ 44,000.


She now gets a last chance at a 2018 LPGA Card in the Symetra Tour Championship at Daytona Beach, Florida, starting tonight.  Liv would basically win though to be sure of finishing in the Top 10, although it is possible that more than 10 cards may be awarded this year.


You can follow scoring at www.lpga.com/symetra


Other News


A number of our top players are not in action this week.  Steven Alker and Tim Wilkinson will now have a decent break before the Web.Com Tour starts up again in mid-January in the Bahamas.


Danny Lee is not in this week’s PGA event – the Safeway Open in Napa, California, which signals the beginning(!) of the 2018 PGA Tour season.  He will be hoping to put a spate of recent injuries behind him when he eventually resumes.


Michael Hendry is understandably sitting out this week’s Japan Tour event before he gets into an extremely demanding schedule with eight consecutive tournaments starting with the Japan Open next week, and ending with the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Pines in December.


Three New Zealanders are currently trying their luck in Web.Com Stage 1 Q School: Nick Voke in Nebraska, and Ben Campbell and Steven Heyes in Lantana, Texas.  Voke is currently the best placed of these, being T31 after one round, but both Campbell (T63) and Heyes (76) are well off the pace in Texas.  In both cases, the top 24 and ties advance to Stage 2.


Finally, Josh Geary and Fraser Wilkin are both in the latest China Tour event, the Shenzhou Peninsula Classic, starting today.


Special Offer to Friends of the PGA from our official Accommodation supplier Ramada


 


The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) has partnered with Ramada Hotels and Resorts to be the official accommodation supplier to the PGA for the next three years.


Under the partnership, PGA members are able to book accommodation at all existing Ramada properties throughout New Zealand at a preferred rate. This offer has now been extended to the Friends of the PGA, and all you need to do is follow the three easy steps below.


 


Step 1 / to make a booking, visit   www.ramada.co.nz


Step 2 / to make a reservation, just press book direct to access our room availability screen


Step 3 / input promo code (the promo code for the PGA) Code: PGANZ