[PHOTO: Getty Images]
The PGA Tour heads to the Lone Star State this week with five Australians teeing up in the Texas Children’s Houston Open. Scottie Scheffler, US Open champion Wyndham Clark and Jason Day are some of the big names teeing up at Memorial Park Golf Course in Houston.
Lismore’s Rhein Gibson, who plays on the Korn Ferry Tour, entered Monday qualifying for Houston and shot a 67 to enter a playoff, and then secured one of four qualifying spots. “It’s a little bit of redemption; I was in a qualifier here three years ago and I lost in a playoff so it’s great to get the spot this year,” the Australian said on Tuesday.
Gibson is famous for shooting a 16-under-par 55 at River Oaks Golf Club in Oklahoma in 2012, a round later recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the lowest of all time.
AUSSIE FIRST-ROUND TEE-TIMES
Aaron Baddeley 11.31pm Thursday
Cameron Davis 11.42pm
Jason Day 5.04am Friday
Harrison Endycott 6.10am
Rhein Gibson 6.21am
BETTING ODDS (TAB)
Jason Day $21
Cameron Davis $51
Aaron Baddeley $151
Harrison Endycott $251
Rhein Gibson $501
WORLD RANKING UPDATE
The Masters will invite its final wave of players from the top 50 on the Official World Golf Ranking after the Houston Open. Day and Davis are already exempt for the Masters, while there isn’t an Australian close enough to No.50 on the rankings who could play his way into the Masters via this category. Although the winner of next week’s Valero Texas Open books the final spot in the Masters, a category any Australian could snatch. Matt Jones was the last Australian to punch the last Masters ticket when he won in a playoff at the 2014 Shell Houston Open (the pre-Masters event that year).
MASTERS UPDATE
Australia’s contingent for the Masters currently sits at six. That includes major winners Cameron Smith, Day, and 2013 Augusta National champion Adam Scott. Davis secured his Masters start last year when he tied for fourth at the PGA Championship, earning an exemption into the next year’s Masters. Min Woo Lee secured a return to Augusta National via the world ranking on December 31, while an amateur, Jasper Stubbs, rounds out the green-and-gold charge having won the Asia Pacific Amateur Championship at Royal Melbourne last year, a pathway for amateurs to the April major.
