John Lyras leads in Kalgoorlie
The Graham Marsh designed Kalgoorlie Golf Club in Western Australia – image PGA of Australia
The second event of the 2026/2027 Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia schedule, the WAPGA Championship, has reached the halfway stage at the Kalgoorlie Golf Club in Western Australia, one of 18 tournaments on this year’s schedule.
The opening event of the new season was played in Port Moresby in August when Josh Armstrong won over Lachlan Aylen and Louis Dobbelaar, but this event kicks off a prolonged series of events over the next five months culminating in a three-event swing in New Zealand through February and the National Tournament on the Mornington Peninsula in late March.
The three standout events in terms of prestige and prize money will be the Australian and New Zealand Opens and the Australian PGA Championship, with most of the other events carrying prize money of around A$250,000, the exception being the NSW Open, which plays for around A$800,000.
This week’s event in Kalgoorlie is played at the publicly owned, Graham Marsh-designed Kalgoorlie Golf Club, set amid the red dirt of the gold-mining area east of Perth, about 600 kilometres east of the city.
Through 36 holes, the leader is NSW golfer John Lyras, who has returned to tournament golf after a wrist injury has curtailed much of 2026, and although without a victory on the Australasian Tour, he has produced one or two runner-up finishes, including when second behind Brendan Jones at the 2023 NZ Open.
“I feel like I’m getting to a point where I’m starting to understand my game a bit better,” said Lyras. “And playing these first two rounds, that was really evident out there for me, even just analysing my own game out there. And I’m really pleased with the progress that I’ve got going at the moment.
“And truthfully, I love the direction I’m heading, but ultimately it’s just trying to alleviate some stresses on the body and my swing. And at the same time, it’s translating into better shots and the scoring still, you probably don’t score as well as you’d like to every round of golf – I think every golfer can say that – but I think just in terms of the way the ball feels off the club and through the turf, it’s been very different, and it’s been nice to feel a little bit less stress through the hands and the arms during a round of golf.”
Lyras leads by one over Queensland’s Dylan Gardner and American Tyler McCumber, whose father, Mark, was a ten-time winner on the PGA Tour, including wins at the Players Championship and the Tour Championship.
28-year-old Gardner is another yet to win on the PGA Tour of Australasia, but he did finish runner-up at the Gippsland Super 6 in 2024.
The cut fell at 2 over, eight shots from the lead, with 51 players making it to the weekend.
