Declan O’Donovan sets the standard for the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia’s newest professionals.
Twelve months ago, Declan O’Donovan arrived on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia with plenty of promise.
For the new season, he arrives with something even more valuable: belief.
Not the belief that comes from being one of Australia’s best amateurs. Nor the confidence that accompanies a decorated junior career. The belief that only comes from proving to yourself that you belong in the professional game both here on the Australasian Tour and overseas. For O’Donovan, that belief wasn’t forged by victories or trophies. It was built during the toughest month of his young professional career.
After playing his way into the final group of the 2025 NSW Open at The Vintage Golf Club on his professional debut, expectations were understandably high for how he would perform in the paid ranks.
Although he faded on that Sunday in the New South Wales Hunter Valley to finish tied for 26th, those who had watched him dominate amateur golf, including winning the Canadian Amateur Championship, expected the transition to continue to be seamless.
Instead, it followed with three straight missed cuts. It wasn’t the introduction many expected. Nor the one O’Donovan had envisioned himself.
“I stayed amateur to play the Eisenhower Trophy and the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, then came in feeling pretty good,” the Avondale Golf Club star reflects ahead of the 2026-2027 season, his first full season as a professional.
“Even at the NSW Open I made the last group on Sunday and, regardless of the finish, I felt like I fitted in straight away. But then I just didn’t really get anything going. I missed a few cuts and was kind of wondering what was going on.”
Such setbacks are common among young professionals working out how to turn an outstanding amateur résumé into a full-time career that puts enough money in the bank to continue from year to year. Many can find the tide of a sluggish start as they try to make that transition almost impossible to turn. O’Donovan made a conscious decision that those early stumbles would not becoming defining moments.
“I feel like one thing good players always do is tell themselves a story,” he adds. “I was telling myself the story that this was going to be such a cool thing to talk about once I started performing.
“As much as I didn’t want to, I kept thinking that, although it wasn’t a very long period, it would become part of
the story.”
It proved to be exactly that.
King of the Castle
The breakthrough came at Cobram Barooga Golf Club during Webex Players Series Murray River, where O’Donovan announced himself with a T-3 finish behind Haydn Barron that transformed not only his season, but his perspective. Suddenly the game felt familiar again.
Soon afterwards came his breakthrough five-shot victory at Webex Players Series Sydney at Castle Hill, a defining moment that secured playing rights on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia for the next two years and laid the foundation for a Rookie of the Year campaign few could match.
With a maturity and somewhat stubbornness that refuses to use inexperience as a fail-safe, O’Donovan believes those difficult opening weeks may have been exactly what he needed.
“Now I get to play all the events for the next two years,” he says. “That’s really nice. I’ve never played the Australian Open or Australian PGA before, our two biggest events, so I’m really excited about those two especially.”
The numbers tell the story of an outstanding rookie season for the 23-year-old who was a promising soccer player before turning to golf at age 16. A maiden professional victory. Multiple podium finishes. Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia Rookie of the Year. A start in the Canadian Open on the PGA Tour, thanks to his 2025 Canadian Amateur victory, where he only missed the halfway cut by a shot. And a first international win on the Clutch Pro Tour in England. Yet the statistics only tell part of the story.
Calm that followed the storm
The biggest development wasn’t technical, according to O’Donovan, it was emotional. Even during those early missed cuts, he said he never allowed frustration to consume him.
“Maybe sometimes, when I was by myself, I wasn’t feeling very good,” he admits. “But whenever I was around other people, I always looked to the good.”
That mindset would be tested more than ever during the final round at Castle Hill. Standing on the fifth hole with a chance to win his first professional tournament, O’Donovan hit two balls in the water. What would ordinarily sound the death knell for any winning aspirations, especially for a new professional chasing his first title, instead sparked something unexpected.
“I actually remember how calm I felt,” says O’Donovan, who is coached by PGA professional Ben Paterson at Avondale Golf Club.
“It was refreshing. I was just like, It’s all good. Not letting a golf score affect my emotions is something all golfers work on, and it’s something I’ve invested in a lot. In the moment I needed it most, I was able to tame my emotions and let them serve me rather than battle with them.”
Rather than spiralling, O’Donovan played arguably the best stretch of golf of his young career.
“The focus and intensity I had over the last nine or 10 holes was unbelievable,” he says. “It’s honestly like a drug. You’re completely in the moment. You’re seeing the shots, wanting to create them, and I was able to create them exactly how I saw them under the most pressure I’d ever experienced.”
It was a victory built as much on composure as shot-making. Those who had watched O’Donovan throughout his amateur career immediately noticed the difference. Only a couple of years earlier, he had worn every emotion on his sleeve during the Australian Amateur Championship at Commonwealth Golf Club, playing in the final group before shooting an 81 that was 14 shots worse than eventual winner Jye Halls. Today, there is a calmness that simply wasn’t there before, especially at Commonwealth.
“I couldn’t agree more,” O’Donovan said when that comparison was put to him. “It’s part of growing up. Not being as much of a kid helps. You kind of grow into your own skin and learn a few things.”
That growth hasn’t happened by accident. With the assistance of Golf Australia national team coach Dean Kinney, O’Donovan has worked extensively on the mental side of his game. A key focus is his relationship with himself, developing tools that allow him to remain present when the pressure inevitably rises. It has changed not only the way he competes, but the way he thinks.
Rather than worrying about outcomes, rankings or prizemoney, his attention has narrowed to something much simpler: the next shot.
“I play my best golf when I’m not focused on what’s happened and I’m not looking at what I want to achieve,” he explains. “I’m focused on the golf shot that’s in front of me.
“I’m just going to step up to the shot, hit it as hard as I can and then go to the next one and do the same thing.”
That philosophy was reinforced during his opportunities overseas. Making starts alongside established PGA Tour players at the RBC Canadian Open in June could easily have been intimidating. Instead, it confirmed what he has slowly begun believing. That he belongs.
O’Donovan found himself playing practice rounds alongside established Tour winners Ryan Fox and Cam Davis and rather than nerves, he found that Zen state that washed over him at Castle Hill.
“I stepped behind the ball on the first tee and thought, Why aren’t I nervous?” he said. “I felt perfectly fine. I played with Ryan Fox and then Cam Davis and by the second tee of the tournament I just felt really comfortable.
“Comfortable in my own skin. That was probably my biggest takeaway.”
Although he missed the cut by a single shot after rounds of 70-69, O’Donovan walked away encouraged.
“I didn’t even feel like I played that well,” he says. “So that was nice.”
Going global
That quiet confidence shapes his outlook entering the 2026-2027 Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia season. While many second-year professionals feel pressure to back up a breakthrough campaign, O’Donovan is deliberately avoiding that mindset.
He isn’t defending Rookie of the Year and he isn’t chasing expectations. In his mind, he’s simply starting again.
“I’m treating it as my first season,” he said. “I don’t really have many thoughts about it. I’m just going to play.”
His schedule reflects bigger ambitions. Alongside another full Australasian campaign, O’Donovan plans to contest DP World Tour Qualifying School and potentially Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School, determined to continue climbing the international pathway while remaining grounded by the routines that brought him success.
The Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia, though, remains home. It is where he discovered he belonged and it is where he learned to trust himself. And this summer, it is where another wave of talented New South Welshmen will attempt to follow his lead.
Blake Phillips (Concord), Coby Carruthers (Concord), Daley Loumanis (St Michael’s), Jake Riley (Avondale), Will Moody (Avondale), Ali Rachid (NSW) and Jye Halls (Mollymook/NSW) all enter the 2026-2027 season hoping to make the same successful transition from elite amateur golf to the professional ranks. They share the same dreams O’Donovan carried only 12 months ago. His advice to this year’s rookie class from NSW is wonderfully uncomplicated.
“They’re all really good golfers in their own right,” he said. “Just stick to your guns. Stick to what makes you good. Keep trying to improve in every area, but don’t change anything.”
Rookie Blues
Loumanis has already shown he can beat the professionals, claiming a one-shot victory at the Ford NSW Open Regional Qualifying Tournament at South West Rocks Country Club last year.
Carruthers was the standout performer from the group at Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia Qualifying School, producing back-to-back rounds of 67 over the final two rounds at Sandhurst Club to finish tied for second, four shots behind established professional Hayden Hopewell.
Winner of the Faldo Junior Tour Asian Final in Vietnam in April, Carruthers collected six top-10 finishes on the adidas PGA Pro-Am Series shortly after turning pro, while Phillips finished tied for ninth at qualifying school before recording five top-10 results in his first seven starts as a professional.
Moody has gone one step further, sharing victory at the Howeston Pro-Am in Brisbane during a run of five consecutive top-10 finishes, while Rachid has already posted a top-five finish from just two pro starts.
Halls was in that final group with O’Donovan at the Australian Amateur in 2025, winning the title by a distant seven-stroke margin as the pinnacle of his amateur career. He went on to finish equal sixth in the NSW Open.
Whether this new group of NSW rookies can replicate O’Donovan’s remarkable first-year campaign will be one of the many storylines of the new tour season.
For O’Donovan, the journey from highly regarded amateur to tour winner took little more than three months. Now comes the next challenge. No longer the promising newcomer, he begins the 2026-2027 season as one of the tour’s rising stars – and the player a new generation of NSW professionals, and many others, will measure themselves against.
CHALLENGER PGA TOUR OF AUSTRALASIA SCHEDULE
2026
August 27-30 PNG Open at Royal Port Moresby Golf Club
September 26-27
World Sand Greens Championship at Binalong Community Club (non-OOM)
October 8-11 CKB WA PGA Championship at Kalgoorlie Golf Course
October 15-18 WA Open at Secret Harbour Golf Links
October 22-25
Players Series SA hosted by Greg Blewett at Willunga Golf Course
November 12-15 Ford NSW Open at The Vintage Golf Club
November 19-22 Queensland PGA Championship at Nudgee Golf Club
November 26-29 BMW Australian PGA Championship at The Lakes Golf Club
December 3-6 Capital.com Australian Open at Kingston Heath Golf Club
December 10-13 Vic PGA Championship at Moonah Links Resort
2027
January 7-10
Players Series Perth hosted by Minjee & Min Woo Lee at Royal Fremantle Golf Club
January 14-17
Players Series Victoria hosted by Marcus Fraser at Peninsula Kingswood Country Golf Club
January 21-24 Vic Open at 13th Beach Golf Links
January 28-31
Players Series Murray River in honour of Jarrod Lyle at Cobram Barooga Golf Club
February 4-7
Players Series Sydney hosted by Peter O’Malley at Castle Hill Country Club
February 11-14
Quinovic NZ PGA Championship at Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club
February 18-21
ISPS Handa Japan-Australasia Championship at Royal Auckland & Grange Golf Club
February 25-28 106th New Zealand Open at Millbrook Resort
March 18-21 The National Tournament at The National Golf Club
Photographs by getty images/Minas Panagiotakis, Oisin Keniry, Jason McCawley
