Around the wider world of golf: Jon Rahm won the Hero World Challenge; Kurt Kitayama won the Afrasia Bank Mauritius Open on the ET/Asian Tour/Sunshine Tour; Miguel Tabuena won the Queen's Cup on the Asian Tour; Satoshi Kodaira won the Golf Nippon Series JT Cup on the Japan Golf Tour; and Michael Buttacavoli won the Latinoamérica Tour Championship - Shell Championship.
I know most of you expected the Limerick Summary to focus on Jon Rahm's win at the Hero World Challenge, the unofficial 18-player PGA Tour event that benefits Tiger's Foundation... but you were wrong. The history was happening Down Under.
The Australian World Cup of Golf team, Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman, were doing their best to beat each other at the Australian PGA Championship, one of the three Australian majors known as the Triple Crown. (The Australian Masters and Australian Open are the other two.) Smith was the defending champ, and the last player to defend this title was Robert Allenby (2000 and 2001).
But Leishman was coming off a PGA Tour win just over a month ago at the CIMB Classic and has been in good form most of the year. Smith is still looking for his first PGA Tour win.
Smith started the day with a three-stroke lead over Leish, but the tables turned quickly as Smith went +1 on the front nine while Leish went -4. Then the tables turned on the back nine, with Leish going +1 while Smith went -3 to win by two and pull off the historic back-to-back.
Smith says he plans to use this win to start his climb up the OWGR. He's expected to move inside the Top30 this week. But more importantly, he stole Rahm's thunder with his successful defense... and picked up his second Limerick Summary. That's right, I covered this event last year, so he became the first-ever to grab back-to-back Australian PGA Limerick Summaries. Like I said -- HISTORIC!
Cam’s back-to-back wins are historic—The photo came from this page at pga.org.au.
And that’s not just empty rhetoric!
‘Cause it’s been seventeen
Years since anyone’s seen
Such a feat—and Cam’s simply euphoric!
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