Defending champion Peter Lonard didn’t quite look the part yesterday, just a day ahead of the start of the Australian PGA Championship, hanging around the front of the clubhouse barefoot, in T-shirt and shorts.
“Just on my way back from the gym — honest,” Lonard said. “I’m not playing the pro-am till the afternoon, so I thought I’d better get serious about a workout.”
Lonard has won the Australian PGA title at Coolum three times in the last six years — sharing the championship with Australian countryman Jarrod Moseley in 2002 when darkness ended a playoff, in 2004 and last year, all of them on the par-72 Hyatt Regency resort course on Queensland state’s Sunshine Coast.
Why he plays so well here is a mystery to him, based mostly on his lack of preparation.
“It’s just a pretty relaxed sort of atmosphere,” Lonard said. “It’s a great place to stay and I usually have a few friends hanging around. I probably do everything wrong — I barely go to the gym, I eat pizza, drink beer and don’t really think much about golf. Maybe I should do that all year.”
The 41-year-old Lonard’s only win on the US PGA tour came at the 2005 MCI Heritage, and his best finish this year was a second at the Zurich Classic at New Orleans. Last year, a final-round 65 gave Lonard the win at Coolum, his ninth in Australia.
Lonard and a field that includes American John Daly, South African Tim Clark, Robert Allenby and last week’s Australian Masters champion Rod Pampling will find a vastly different course when play begins Thursday. Recent heavy rainfall has left the greens slower than usual, fairways with less run and the creeks full.
“With the rain we’ve had and the washouts, on four, five seven, eight, there is water right to the edge,” Pampling said. “You can be as aggressive as you like with this course, but be prepared to drop shots if you don’t hit the fairways.”
Allenby nearly joined his compatriot Adam Scott — who withdrew on Monday because of a surfing-related right knee injury — on the sidelines this week. Allenby, who was in contention at the Masters at Huntingdale last week until a late double-bogey — considered staying at home with his ailing mother, Sylvia, who has stopped all treatment for lung and kidney cancer.
“I didn’t think I was ready, mentally and emotionally, to play this week,” Allenby said yesterday. “But I spoke to my mom on Tuesday morning and she said: ‘I’d love you to win the tournament, but if you don’t, don’t worry about it.’”
“It’s a pretty tough time for all of us. We’re a close family, I’m the youngest of four and we’ve never had to go through this before,” he said. “We know what’s going to happen.”
Daly is making his first appearance at Coolum since 2002, when he threw his putter and ball into the pond on the 18th hole after his second round. He was later disqualified for not signing his scorecard.
The 42-year-old Daly missed the cut at last week’s Australian Masters but had a final-round 62 at the Hong Kong Open and tied for 17th the week before. He’s also playing next week’s Australian Open at Royal Sydney.
■NEDBANK CHALLENGE
AFP, SUN CITY, SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa’s Trevor Immelman makes his first appearance in his home country since winning the US Masters when he defends his title in the Nedbank Challenge limited field tournament at the Gary Player Country Club starting today.
Immelman, 28, won the event last year after receiving a late invitation. But less than two weeks later he had to withdraw from the South African Open because of a benign lung tumor which required surgery.
Four months later he held off Tiger Woods and the rest of the world’s top golfers at the Masters, holding or sharing the lead through all four rounds in brutally tough conditions.
He hasn’t had a win since and in recent magazine interviews admitted that he found it difficult to lift his game to the same level in the months that followed.
“There were many different things that I had to find time to deal with and learn how to handle them,” he told the South African edition of Golf Digest. “Probably for the first time in my life — and my career — I let golf slip down my priority list.”
Favorite for the US$1.2 million first prize is Spain’s Sergio Garcia, whose recent good form has lifted him to No. 2 in the world rankings.
Other strong contenders will include Henrik Stenson and Robert Karlsson, who combined to win the World Cup for Sweden in China on Sunday.
Stenson has finished second and fourth in two previous appearances at Sun City but world No. 6 Karlsson will be playing in the tournament for the first time. The 12 invited players are guaranteed a minimum of US$200,000 in prize money but this year’s field lacks some of the glamour of previous years, although eight of the world’s top 20 will be teeing up.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
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