Asia Pacific Amateur Championship returns to Dubai
This writer interviewing Tianlang Guan during his historic win in Thailand in 2012
This week witnesses the 16th staging of one of golf’s more significant amateur championships, the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship, this year being played at the Emirates Golf Club, the second occasion the prestigious event is being played in Dubai.
41 teams from around the Asia Pacific region will field as few as one and as many as seven members, vying to claim a title that earns not only the coveted title of Asia Pacific Amateur Champion but also a start in the 2026 Masters and the 2026 Open Championship, among other benefits.
The event is a partnership between the Asia Pacific Golf Confederation and the Masters Tournament, with most of the funding for the event coming from Augusta National, which uses monies generated by their magnificent major championship in April to fund much of the growth of the game. This is a perfect example.
No expense is spared in the running and broadcasting of the event, played over 72 holes of strokeplay.
Australia will be represented by seven players in 2025. NSW’s Declan Donovan, Jye Halls and Kyan Mudadana will be joined by Queenslanders Harry Takis, Billy Dowling, Chase Oberle and Graeme Hourn, Hourn being the odd man out here given his age of 57 compared to the next oldest Declan O’Donovan (22).
The New Zealand team consists of Christchurch’s Cooper Moore who finished as the leading Australasian in the event in 2024 and Josh Bai and Robby Turnbull of Auckland.
Australians have won the event on four occasions previously. In 2014, South Australian Anthony Murdaca won at Royal Melbourne, Perth’s Curtis Luck came from seven behind in the final round to win in Korea in 2016, the same year he was US Amateur Champion, in 2022, NSW’s Harrison Crowe was successful, and in 202,3 Victorian Jasper Stubbs took the title.
Chinese players hold the record of five wins with Australia and Japan each winning four times.
The most recognisable figure to come from the event is Hideki Matsuyama, who won back-to-back in 2010 and 2011 and would go on to win the Masters and ten other PGA Tour and 8 Japan Tour events in his remarkable career to date.
Perhaps, however, one of the greatest stories to come from the event was the win of 14-year-old Tianlang Guan, who holed a sliding let to right 5 footer at the final hole in 2012 to defeat CT Pan in Thailand.
While that was remarkable in itself, less than six months later, Guan became the youngest ever golfer to make the cut in a major when, at the age of still 14, he made the weekend at the 2013 Masters despite a one-shot penalty for slow play.
The Asia Pacific Amateur Championship has, in its short 15 year history, developed into one of the top three amateur titles in world golf and the much coveted title and its significant benefits will be hard fought for in Dubai this weekend.
