Tournament Preview: 2024 CKB WA PGA Championship
October 10th - 13th, 2024 | Kalgoorlie Golf Course
Second Aussie Tour event, second remote locale. This time, I’m in the outback, 600 kilometers east of Perth in a city called Kalgoorlie. There is a city here for one reason and one reason only … gold mining. It is the home of the largest gold mine in all of Australia (aptly named “The Super Pit”) and the surrounding area was once referred to as the richest land on Earth.
Since I’ve been here, I’ve actually found some gold myself. It may not be the kind that will make us rich (sorry Kaylie), but it sparkles amidst the arid landscape and most certainly brings a smile to my face. My gold? … the Kalgoorlie Golf Course.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got the invite from the PGA of Australia to play in the WA PGA (my sincerest thanks to everyone at the PGA of Australia by the way). I had never heard of the course, had no clue where to find Kalgoorlie on the map, and knew more about the ‘bloomin onion’ at Outback steakhouse than I did the realities of the Australian outback.
An early Sunday morning flight from Melbourne to Perth and a 600km drive later, I quickly learned what Kalgoorlie was about after driving past the massive mining facility on the west side of the city. The city was a ghost town late on a Sunday afternoon, but meandering through the Westworld-like main thoroughfare, you could tell everything here was geared towards servicing and entertaining the hardened men (mostly) and women who came to Kalgoorlie to keep the mines running.
The following morning, I drove into the entrance of the golf course with my mouth agape at what appeared to be a golf course dropped on the Arabia Terra of Mars. Green strips of land surrounded by red dirt, rocks, bush, and small clusters of trees (mostly around tee boxes). The clubhouse was modest (it is a public golf course, not some fancy-schmancy private club) but the course itself was truly grand.
I’ll talk a bit more about the course down below, but I drove off the property on Monday night after playing eighteen holes grinning from ear-to-ear. I couldn’t help but think about how fortunate I was to be in a place like THIS living out my dreams. If you gave me a choice between playing a PGA Tour (the US version) event at a course like PGA National (where they play the Honda Cognizant Classic) or playing this Aussie Tour event at Kalgoorlie Golf Course in the middle of nowhere, I truly think I’d choose this one.
I’m here this week not because of recent good play (as y’all know, it has not been great), but because there are at least a few people out there who believe in me. These invitations don’t grow on trees and I’m highly aware of the urgency to perform at a high level if I want to get more bites at the apple. With that said, I’m going to do my best to put that aside and enjoy myself this week. I did not have fun at Asian Tour Q-School (for a variety of reasons as I wrote about last week) and I didn’t have all that much fun at the PNG Open (again, for a variety of reasons).
I know I play best when I’m enjoying myself (though this might chicken or egg … am I enjoying myself because I’m playing well?) so why not take a bit of pressure off myself and see what happens. That doesn’t mean I won’t be focused over every shot or bark at myself a bit when I do something stupid … but in the lead up to Thursday, in between shots, and after the rounds I will do my best to remind myself that I am doing what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m playing golf, professionally, on one of the best Tours in the world. I’m surrounded by players who are incredibly skilled and I’m fitting in (even if so far it’s been for small, fleeting stretches of golf). I’m doing it. Why do it if you can’t let yourself enjoy it?
The Event
Tournament: 2024 CKB Western Australia PGA Championship
Golf Course: Kalgoorlie Golf Course
Location: Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, Australia
Live Scoring: Link Here
As far as I can tell, this event has been around in some form since the early 1930’s. It hasn’t always been an event on the Tour of Australasia, but it has an incredible history. It’s been played at Kalgoorlie since 2012 with recent winners including Ben Eccles (2023), David Micheluzzi (2022 … David now plays on the DP World Tour), and Brett Rumford (2015 … another household name that has played all over the world).
Like most Tour events, it is a four-round tournament running from Thursday to Sunday. 120 guys are teeing it up this year with everyone chasing a piece of the $250K purse. There is a two round cut with the top 50 professionals and ties getting a chance to play on the weekend and earn Order of Merit points in addition to the money.
Kalgoorlie is clearly quite proud of being the home of this championship. They have strong sponsorship from CKB and TX Civil & Logistics who have been the namesake of the event for the past ten iterations. They seem to have done a good job of promoting the event in the community and I’m expecting to see a number of locals come out to watch the action, especially on the weekend where admission is free for spectators.
Last year, the Saturday and Sunday rounds were televised on Fox Sports Australia and the Kayo app, but I have not been able to confirm that it will be shown live this year (I’ll drop an update on Instagram @hazardsascent if I find out it’s being televised this year).
The Course
At 7400 yards and prone to getting windy, Kalgoorlie Golf Course has some bite to it despite the prepossessing setting. While it is long on the scorecard, the fairways are fairly bouncy so it doesn’t quite play as long as the number suggests. The prevailing wind also helps a bit more than it hurts in aggregate so only a few times during the round do specific holes feel unmanageable. Out of the four par-fives, three are likely reachable for the longer players … though I will almost certainly be laying up on each of them (two in particular require forced carries on the second shots that I likely won’t be able to make due to where I’ll be playing my drives from).
There isn’t a lot of rough out here and fairways are generally pretty forgiving. Getting off the tee and giving yourself scoring clubs into greens won’t really be the issue for the most part. The challenge (putting aside the wind for a minute) stems primarily from the green contouring and well-placed bunkers that really force players to be thoughtful about approach angles. There are a few holes out there that will be impossible to get the ball close to the pin if you don’t have the perfect angle into the green. That is partly due to the design of the holes and partly due to greens being fairly firm and balls not stopping immediately upon reaching the surface.
The fairways are a tiny bit scraggly, but the greens are excellent shape. They aren’t too fast and certainly aren’t slow. It is that perfect happy medium that allows you to be aggressive on putts, especially when putting uphill. The bunkers are firm in most places and it looks like they’ve basically just used the sand from the surrounding outback. A few of them have more sand which makes judging lies a bit tricky, especially when the majority are closer to being hard pan.
The course also has the most unique green site I’ve ever seen in real life. The target on the eighteenth hole is a three-tier green with the front third being about 15 feet (!!!) higher than the lower, back third. My description won’t do it justice and I didn’t grab a photo before publication of this, but it kind of resembles one of those massive, tiered water slides that shoot you down before leveling out and then down again into the pool. And unlike most tiered greens, it is reversed so if your approach shot is just a tiny bit long when the pin is on the front tier, the ball could end up on either the second or third tier depending on speed and you might have a eighty foot putt up a mountain. I’m not sure it is GOOD golf design, but it is certainly very cool to look at (assuming you’ve walked off it making par or better … bogeys might make it look a little less cool).
The Field
Despite the remote locale, most of the big boys are here this week. I looked down the entry list the other day and had a lot more “oh I know of him” moments than I had at the PNG Open.
Last year’s winner, Ben Eccles is back to defend his title. Most of the top-50 from last year’s Order of Merit will be playing, including a really good young talent by the name of Elvis Smylie who I’ve followed closely after watching him contend as an amateur at a WebEx event a few years ago (I was prepping for the DP World Tour Q-School at Rosebud and watched the final two rounds of the event).
This will also be the first professional event for a young guy named Jasper Stubbs. Jasper won the Asian-Pacific Amateur last year which got him an invite into this year’s Masters (yes, THAT Masters). He just finished competing in this year’s version of the Asian-Pacific and will have flown in from Tokyo the day before the event so hats off to him for making the effort.
The Preparation
It feels like I say this every event, but I feel really good this week. My game is the best it has been for a while. I’m taking all of the right steps and going about the process of getting better correctly. If I don’t play well, it won’t be due to a lack of concentrated/focused effort on doing the little things well in the lead up.
I got into Kalgoorlie on Sunday night and spent Monday de-intimidating the golf course (I always feel a bit intimidated by a course when looking at it online or in my UpGame app and I always feel better about my ability to play it after I get out there). I played nine holes on Tuesday and spent quite a bit of time hitting bunker and pitch shots. Tomorrow, I’ll play nine more holes in the morning and focus on my short game again with the ultimate intention of getting as much rest as possible in the afternoon.
We did NOT get a lot of wind on Monday and Tuesday which is a shame because it is supposed to kick up once the tournament starts. I made a ton of birdies in my practice rounds (this was a nice feeling after struggling to make anything for a couple of months) but they all came in really good conditions. I’m hoping for a bit more wind tomorrow so I can see how the game really stacks up when the course is at its fiercest.
Another reason I intend to take it easy tomorrow is for the first time in a while, my lower back has tightened up on me just a touch. Nothing prohibitive at the moment but something I’d rather not push too hard prior to the event starting. I have played a lot of golf over the last few weeks and am hopeful to play another nine rounds in the next twelve days so ensuring my body is good to go will be integral to that even being feasible.
I’ll be back with some kind of recap over the weekend. I’m hopeful that it will be a mid-tournament update after I’ve made the cut, but you’ll get one either way.
For those of you looking for more frequent updates, follow me on Instagram @hazardsascent and check out my stories.
Chat soon … keep climbing y’all.