Australia will boast a seven-strong contingent at this week’s PGA Championship at Oak Hill CC in upstate New York. Most of the seven have been firing on all cylinders on their various tours, including Cameron Smith, who lost in playoff at the the LIV Tulsa event last week. On the same weekend, Jason Day won his first PGA Tour event for five years and Adam Scott is coming off back-to-back top 10s on the PGA Tour.
Day, who also owns five other top-10s on the PGA Tour this year and won the 2015 PGA Championship, will be among the favourites this week alongside Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Dustin Johnson and reigning Open champion Smith.
Day took Monday off in Rochester, New York in order to recover from his emotionally-charged win at the Byron Nelson last week after a five-year winning drought.
“I’m going to give myself a day off just because of the high that I’m on right now,” he said on Sunday night. “I know over the next few days I’m going to hit a low pretty quick, just from past experience, going from such a high to a low can actually kill your adrenaline. You can come into Thursday kind of sluggish and not really prepared. I have to understand that moving forward. I think things are moving in the correct direction.
“I know that there’s a few things in the swing that I have to talk to Chris (coach Chris Como) about, so we can get it tighter, dispersion becomes tighter, over time the implementation of these small little things I’m thinking about yields multiple win seasons instead of just winning once.”
The seven Australians in the field are Day, Scott, Smith, Min Woo Lee, Lucas Herbert, Cam Davis and 26-year-old Victorian David Micheluzzi, who is making his major championship debut as a reward for having won the PGA Tour of Australasia Order of Merit in 2022-23.
YOUR GUIDE TO AUSSIES AT THE 2023 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP
TEE TIMES RD 1 (in AEST)
-Min Woo Lee 9.27pm Thursday (with Andrew Putnam, Emiliano Grillo)
-Cameron Smith 10.33pm (with US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, and Masters winner Jon Rahm)
-Jason Day 11.06pm (with Keegan Bradley, Bryson DeChambeau)
-Cameron Davis 2.30am Friday AEST (with Matt Cahill, Taylor Montgomery)
-Lucas Herbert 3.20am AEST (with Brian Harman, Callum Shinkwin)
-Adam Scott 3.36am Friday (with Max Homa, Tony Finau)
-David Micheluzzi 4.15am Friday (Chris Sanger, JJ Spaun)
-New Zealanders: Steven Alker 9pm Thursday, Ryan Fox 9.33pm
Round 2 — Friday/Saturday
9.05pm: Cameron Davis
9.55pm: Lucas Herbert
10.11pm: Adam Scott
10.50pm: David Micheluzzi
2.52am: Min Woo Lee
3.58am: Cameron Smith
4.31am: Jason Day
AUSTRALIAN TV TIMES
Fox Sports and Kayo Sports
Thursday (AEST) 11.30pm-Friday 2pm
Friday 11.30pm-Saturday 2pm
Saturday 11pm-Sunday 2pm
Sunday 11pm-Monday 1pm
THE COURSE
Oak Hill Country Club (East course) is an old, established parkland course with plenty of water and lots of trouble at par-70. As the host of six previous majors.
PRIZE POOL
$US 15 million
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Scottie Scheffler: Always thereabouts and current world No. 1.
Dustin Johnson: Former world No. 1 and winner of the LIV event last weekend.
Jason Day: Another former world No. 1 with red hot form as a last-start winner
Cameron Smith: Runner-up on LIV last weekend and still one of the hottest in the world in the majors.
Jon Rahm: An incredibly consistent run over the past two years has him pushing Scheffler at the top.
Rory McIlroy: Amazing to think he has not won a major since 2014; perhaps this is the week.
-Additional reporting, Martin Blake pga.org.au
