Min Woo Lee – file photo courtesy of Australian Golf Media
Min Woo Lee made a valiant attempt to contend and possibly win the BMW PGA Championship on the final day at Wentworth Golf Club in Virginia Water in Surrey, the 27-year-old West Australian moving within two of the lead when he pitched in for birdie at the par 4 15th hole and when he also birdied the 16th he was within one.
At that point, he was 7 under for the day and with two par fives to finish at Wentworth and his power to aid his cause, it was possible that Lee could have come from near the cutline on Friday evening to win the tournament.
Unfortunately, the 17th, one of two par 5s to finish at Wentworth, is a dangerous driving hole. Perhaps looking for the extra distance he needed to set up a birdie and possibly an eagle, he pulled his tee shot out of bounds, double-bogeyed, and his bold bid for victory was gone.
Lee would, though, birdie the last after finding the green and would eventually finish in a share of 11th place, although some five shots behind the playoff between the eventual winner, Alex Noren, and Frenchman Adrien Saddier.
For Lee, however, the finish ended a run of indifferent form since his breakthrough PGA Tour win in March and, with this week’s French Open his next assignment, he could well finish off his limited 2025 European campaign in style.
Lee’s weekend total of 133 was amongst the best of the leading players.
The tournament was won by the Swede Alex Noren, who won his second tournament in his last three starts, having won the British Masters three weeks ago. He did miss the cut in Switzerland at his last start, but this win and the one at the Belfry mean he has claimed two of the European Tour’s flagship events in 2025 despite playing much of the year in the USA.
Noren is a vice captain of Europe’s Ryder Cup side so he will head to Bethpage not as a member of the team but to play a significant role in the battle in 12 days’ time and perhaps, if needed, a late and in-form replacement should the need arise.
It was Noren’s second win in this most prestigious event and his 12th European Tour victory.
For the runner-up Saddier who, despite being outside the world top 100, has, in the last three months, won the Italian Open and finished 5th in Ireland last week.
Elvis Smylie was the next best of the Australians when he finished in 31st place to maintain his 26th position in the Race to Dubai rankings.
RESULTS
Elvis Smylie continues improved late season form in France
Elvis Smylie – file image courtesy of Australian Golf Media
Australian Elvis Smylie continued his impressive run of late-season form on the DP World Tour with a share of second place at the French Open, just one shot behind the winner, Michael Kim.
Smylie, who is playing his first season on the DP World Tour as a result of his victory at the Australian PGA Championship in Brisbane in November last year, followed up a recent 6th place in Denmark a month ago with a final round of 65 at Golf de Saint-Nom-La-Bretèche, Paris, France, after beginning the day two shots out of the lead.
The 23-year-old Gold Coast golfer played with the eventual winner, Kim, on the final day, and as they arrived at the last, Kim was one ahead of Smylie and Korean Jeong Weon Ko, Ko having finished ten minutes earlier.
Smylie found the green at the par 3 while Kim’s tee shot was left, into the greenside bunker. Smylie 2 putted for par, but PGA Tour player Kim, with a 16-foot putt remaining to claim the title essentially, holed the crucial putt to win his first event anywhere in seven years.
“It feels amazing,” said Kim. “I haven’t won a tournament since 2018 at the John Deere Classic and I really wanted to put on a good showing here this week. I’m just so happy and grateful that I was able to come out with the victory.
“I’ve had a really good year on the PGA TOUR this year. This feels like the perfect cherry on top and I hope to continue this throughout my career.
“To be honest, I felt like I hit a decent bunker shot. That green slides away so much that I knew it was going to be quick and it just didn’t run out as much as I thought.”
Elvis (Smylie) gave me a decent look from the side and it somehow stayed pretty straight through the middle, and I kind of blacked out when the putt went in.
For Smylie, however, the share of the runner-up position earned him a cheque for €239,000 and he now moves to 14th place in the Race to Dubai rankings. Potentially, he is now in a position where he could claim one of the ten PGA Tour cards for season 2026, given to the leading ten players in the Race to Dubai rankings not otherwise exempt on the PGA Tour.
Min Woo Lee, who had begun the final round in a share of the lead with American Brooks Koepka, raced to the turn in 4 under, including an eagle at the 8th hole, and had the lead at that poin,t but he would struggle on the way in and eventually finished in a share of 5th.
RESULTS
Minjee Lee finishes second in Korea
Minjee Lee – file photo Australian Golf Media
Minjee Lee narrowly missed an opportunity to complete the first leg of what may well have been an historic weekend for the Lee family when she finished runner-up after a playoff at Hana Bank Championship at the Bears Best Golf Club in Incheon outside of Seoul.
Lee was, of course, playing the event several hours ahead of the final round of the French Open where her brother Minwoo shares the lead.
Lee went down to Korean golfer, Lee Dayeon, at the second extra hole of a playoff, missing an eight-foot par-saving putt after her opponent had two-putted for par after both had earlier parred the first extra hole.
It was the second time in three years for Lee to lose the event to Lee Dayeon having also lost a playoff to the multi-winning Korean LPGA Tour player in 2023.
Playing the event no doubt because of the commercial arrangement Minjee Lee has with the tournament sponsor Hana Bank, Lee produced a last round of 68 to force the playoff, holing a 30-foot birdie putt at the last to set the target, before just a few moments later, the eventual winner also holed a similar length putt at the 17th.
The winner was full of admiration for her more credentialed opponent.
“Minjee is someone I really admire and look up to, said Lee Dayeon. “She’s such a kind and inspiring person, and it meant so much to me just to be in a playoff with her again. In 2023, I cried after the win, so this time I told her, ‘I’m not going to cry.’ And she told me, ‘It’s okay, you can cry if you want to.’ It was such a sweet moment.”
Victorian Sue Wooster reaches 4th US Senior Women’s Amateur final
Sue Wooster in action today – image USGA
63-year-old Victorian Sue Wooster had progressed to her 4th US Senior Women’s Amateur Championship final after wins in her quarter and semi-final matches today in Hot Springs, Virginia.
Wooster has been in the final on three previous occasions but has yet to claim the title, so tomorrow she takes on South Carolina’s Dawn Woodward in the final of women’s amateur golf’s most significant title.
Fellow Victorian and defending champion Nadene Gole came from 3 down in her quarter-final morning match against Shelley Stouffer, but, despite a birdie at the last hole of her match against the Canadian, she would lose 1 down, and thus Wooster is the only remaining Australian in what has been a good week thus far for the Australian contingent.
Wooster overcame her American quarter-final opponent with some ease, but it was a different story against her semi-final opponent, Sarah Gallagher, finally winning at the first extra hole after a birdie clinched the match.
“It feels amazing,” said Wooster. “Whether I win tomorrow or I lose, just I’m 63 years old and I’ve been in three finals and lost all of them. To be honest I never thought I would make another one.
“I haven’t been playing that good this year, and something just clicked couple of weeks ago and started to get in a groove and I guess here I am. I can’t believe it.
“I mean, I’m happy I’ve come this far. Obviously, I want to win it, but I don’t want to — I think some of the other years, because I lost a few in a row, I just put too much pressure on myself. I don’t want to do that. I just want to keep doing what I’m doing and try and enjoy the day and soak up the experience and just have a good memory with it, whatever the outcome.”
Wooster’s opponent in tomorrow’s final is the 51-year-old Dawn Woodward from South Carolina who is playing in her second US Women’s Senior Amateur Championship after being beaten in the quarter- finals by Nadene Gole last year.
SCORES
Nadene Gole and Sue Wooster reach quarters at US Senior Women’s Am
Nadene Gole in action this week – image courtesy of USGA
56-year-old Victorian golfer Nadene Gole has reached the US Women’s Senior Amateur Championship at the Omni Homestead Resort in Virginia as she continues her great run in senior women’s amateur events internationally.
Gole, the highest-ranked senior women’s amateur in the world, shared 4th place in the 36-hole qualifying earlier in the week and today defeated former champion Ellen Port of Missouri in the Round of 16 as she looks to defend the title she won in Seattle last year.
Gole was 2 down to Port earlier in the match but won three of four holes early in her homeward nine to win 2 up.
Gole not only won this event twelve months ago, she also won the 2024 R&A Senior Women’s Amateur Championship and the 2025 English and Scottish Senior Women’s Amateur Championships.
“Today’s been a game of patience. It’s hard to explain, but you know, it’s a long day,” said Gole, who also defeated Port in a Round-of-32 match in 2023. “Ellen’s always going to be a tough match; she’s a great competitor. We started off a bit scrappy. She flew some good putts in there in the end, and I got some good ones, so I just got her there on the last hole.”
Gole is joined in the quarter finals by her fellow Victorian Sue Wooster (63), a three-time runner-up in the event, after the remarkable and prolific title winner, Wooster, narrowly defeated another Australian, Gemma Dooley, 1 up in her round of 16 match today.
If both players win their respective quarter-final and semi-final matches, they will meet each other in the final.
SCORING
Min Woo Lee’s great weekend at Wentworth
Min Woo Lee – file photo courtesy of Australian Golf Media
Min Woo Lee made a valiant attempt to contend and possibly win the BMW PGA Championship on the final day at Wentworth Golf Club in Virginia Water in Surrey, the 27-year-old West Australian moving within two of the lead when he pitched in for birdie at the par 4 15th hole and when he also birdied the 16th he was within one.
At that point, he was 7 under for the day and with two par fives to finish at Wentworth and his power to aid his cause, it was possible that Lee could have come from near the cutline on Friday evening to win the tournament.
Unfortunately, the 17th, one of two par 5s to finish at Wentworth, is a dangerous driving hole. Perhaps looking for the extra distance he needed to set up a birdie and possibly an eagle, he pulled his tee shot out of bounds, double-bogeyed, and his bold bid for victory was gone.
Lee would, though, birdie the last after finding the green and would eventually finish in a share of 11th place, although some five shots behind the playoff between the eventual winner, Alex Noren, and Frenchman Adrien Saddier.
For Lee, however, the finish ended a run of indifferent form since his breakthrough PGA Tour win in March and, with this week’s French Open his next assignment, he could well finish off his limited 2025 European campaign in style.
Lee’s weekend total of 133 was amongst the best of the leading players.
The tournament was won by the Swede Alex Noren, who won his second tournament in his last three starts, having won the British Masters three weeks ago. He did miss the cut in Switzerland at his last start, but this win and the one at the Belfry mean he has claimed two of the European Tour’s flagship events in 2025 despite playing much of the year in the USA.
Noren is a vice captain of Europe’s Ryder Cup side so he will head to Bethpage not as a member of the team but to play a significant role in the battle in 12 days’ time and perhaps, if needed, a late and in-form replacement should the need arise.
It was Noren’s second win in this most prestigious event and his 12th European Tour victory.
For the runner-up Saddier who, despite being outside the world top 100, has, in the last three months, won the Italian Open and finished 5th in Ireland last week.
Elvis Smylie was the next best of the Australians when he finished in 31st place to maintain his 26th position in the Race to Dubai rankings.
RESULTS
Cameron Percy first Champions Tour victory denied in playoff
Cameron Percy – close again but no cigar – file photo courtesy of PGA of America
U.S.-based Victorian Cameron Percy was denied his first PGA Tour Champions victory despite a stunning final round of 64 at the Stifel Charity Classic at the Norwood Hills Country Club in St. Louis today.
Beginning the day three shots behind the 36-hole leader, Stewart Cink, Percy made the near-perfect start when he eagled the second hole and made the turn in 32, a bogey at the 10th slowed the momentum, but he would add four more birdies in his last seven holes and wait for the three groups behind to finish.
Thomas Bjorn and Alex Cjeka remained alive as possible contenders to Percy’s lead, but when Cjeka bogeyed the final hole, it would see Bjorn and Percy enter a playoff, which Bjorn would win with a birdie at the first extra hole.
“Yeah, just I’m starting to know the courses a bit better so I sort of know where I’m going,” said Percy after his round when asked what he took away from his effort this week. “And I’m putting really nicely from short range, I’m not missing many short putts so that’s really helping.”
Percy has won on the Korn Ferry Tour during his 16-year career in the USA but was denied a PGA Tour victory in his very first season there in 2010 when beaten by a hole-in-one by his opponent in a playoff for the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children event in Las Vegas.
This was, however, Percy’s second playoff loss of this season, his first full season on the PGA Tour Champions, and with the US$184,000, he won today, he now moves to 9th in the Schwab Cup standings with earnings of US$1.15 million.
Mark Hensby 10th and Richard Green 11th were the next best of the Australasians.
Leaderboard
Travis Smyth and Kevin Yuan finish 3rd in Jakarta
Kevin Yuan – file photo courtesy of Asian Tour
Kevin Yuan and Wollongong’s Travis Smyth have finished in a share of 3rd place at the Asian Tour’s Mandiri Indonesia Open at the Pondok Indah Golf Club in Jakarta.
The pair were tied at 16 under and a massive eight shots from the winner, Suteepat Prateeptienchai of Thailand.
Smyth had started the final round three shots off the then pace set by Malaysian Shahriffuddin Arrifin, but a round of 70 saw him lose ground as the Thai golfer stormed home with a final round of 64 to win by seven.
Yuan stormed home from near the cutline on Friday with consecutive weekend rounds of 66 to finish in a share of third place with Smyth.
Yuan is now in 10th place on the Asian Tour Order of Merit and Smyth 13th, the current leader amongst the Australians on the Asian Tour in 2025 being the New Zealand Open winner, Ryan Peake, who stands in 6th place despite a run of disappointing finishes since his emotional win in Queenstown.
Leaderboard
Andrew Martin wins cliffhanger in Darwin
Andrew Martin – image Australian Golf Media
Former Australian Amateur Champion, Andrew Martin, has held off a spirited challenge from New South Wales golfer, Nathan Barbieri, to win the second event of the 2025/2026 PGA Tour of Australasia season’s schedule, the Northern Territory PGA Championship at the Palmerston Golf Club near Darwin.
41-year-old Martin began the final day with a two-shot lead over James Conran and a three-shot lead over Barbiera and American Nathan Jordi. However, an outward nine of 34 by Barbiera had him within one. When Martin bogeyed the 10th, the pair was tied at 11 under.
Through 13 holes Martin was one ahead before both players dropped shots at the next two holes and he held off the challenge of his younger rival with a birdie at the 17th to match his rival and managed to par the last to win by one with Queensland’s Jake McLeod in third place on his own, two behind Barbiera.
For Martin, it was his fourth PGA Tour of Australasia title to go with his win at the 2021 TPS Sydney, the 2022 Victorian PGA Championship and the 2023 TPS Murray river Championship.
Martin moves into second place on the PGA Tour of Australasia’s Order of Merit behind last week’s winner in Papua New Guinea, Cory Crawford after just two events, with Jake McLeod in third place.
Leaderboard
Hannah Green finds form in Massachusetts
Hannah Green – file photo
Off the back of four consecutive missed cuts and a best of 12th in her last nine LPGA Tour starts, Australia’s Hannah Green is contending at the halfway stage of the FM Championship in Norton in Massachusetts.
Weather, then darkness, caused play to be called at 7.15 pm with many of the field still to complete their second rounds.
Green added a second consecutive round of 68 to be tied for 3rd and three shots from the lead held by China’s Miranda Wang.
Currently in a surprising 52nd position in the Race to the Globe rankings, Green has struggled for most of the second half of the season but appears to have things back on track and heads into the weekend with a chance to add a 7th LPGA Tour title.
“My ball striking has not been that good the last couple months, so I feel like I’ve had to rely heavily on my short game,” said Green. “It’s nice that I actually feel like where I want the ball to go is where it’s actually going.
“So, yeah, I definitely feel confident around the greens. It’s nice that I have been hitting more greens and actually have some opportunities to make birdies.
“I’ve been working with my coach for many years now, and I just fall into some certain tendencies with my swing.
“So I actually had a lesson with him on Tuesday. Well, it was supposed to be FaceTime, but as some people may not know, the reception here is not very good, so trying to call him when he’s back in Australia with a time change wasn’t easy. We sent videos back and forth and he was helping me with certain things.
“I almost feel like because I’ve been playing quite poorly I’ve been really technical trying to find what’s going on and not really just going and playing golf. I feel like I changed that mindset of worrying about technique and just working with what I have on this day.
“So that was really helpful. I put a new driver in the bag earlier in the week as well. It’s nice to feel confident with that club. Once you can hit fairways, you feel a lot freer on the course, so that’s been helpful.”
The 28-year-old Green has typically been one of the leading Australians, along with Minjee Lee, in each of her LPGA Tour seasons since first joining in 2018, and with three wins in 2014, her year to date has been a surprise, but with ten more events this season, there is plenty of time to turn things around.
Minjee Lee is the next best of the Australasians in the field, the West Australian in a share of 34th place at 3 under and five behind Green, but Lee still has 14 holes to play of her second round.
Leaderboard
The Omega European Masters – then and now
The great Sir Bob Charles and yours truly during his 1974 Swiss Open victory
51 years ago, I arrived in Crans-sur-Sierre above the Rhone Valley of Switzerland for the 1974 Swiss Open around 9.00pm, having sailed on the hovercraft across the English Channel to Bolougne and then driven across France and Switzerland to this most beautiful of mountain resorts.
Having been raised in the magnificence of the South Island of New Zealand, I couldn’t imagine there would be anything to beat the grandeur of the spectacular scenery of Central Otago or some of the other many areas of my homeland. Still, my first visit to Crans Sur Sierre would go a long way to proving me wrong.
Waking up in the morning following our drive down to Dover from London, then across the Channel and through France and Switzerland passing cities such as Lausanne and Montreaux on Lake Geneva, I opened my balcony door at our boutique hotel, The Teleferique, in the morning of Tuesday of tournament week to a breathtaking view.
The village of Crans Sur Sierre and its adjacent town of Crans Montana are ski resorts in the winter, but in the summer, the Crans Sur Sierre Golf Club emerges from its role as learners slopes for a high-end ski resort to expose a golf course capable of hosting the then Swiss Open, but now of course the Omega European Masters.
This Thursday, the Omega European Masters, or its former equivalent, first held in 1923, is played as an integral part of the DP World Tour, with the winner to receive €475,000, an increase of nearly 80 times from that won by the winner in 1974.
Such a purse makes it a just above average event on the DP World Tour in that regard, but in 1974, when I caddied for the winner of the event, (Sir) Bob Charles, the total purse the winner received was the equivalent of €5,900.
Charles won the event by a shot over Tony Jacklin, and while I would not have swapped the experience of caddying for one of my golfing idols back then, and even now, for anything, it would have been nice to be on the receiving end of a caddie bonus from the €475,000.
The win had come at a crucial time for me, however, and given that the very next week I caddied for Simon Owen when he won the German Open in Krefeld (for an even lesser purse), I was back on my feet and the outlook for the remainder of the year financially was a little more certain.
1974 Swiss Open Results