While the likes of Adam Scott, Jason Day and Geoff Ogilvy are enjoying a small amount of time off, several other Australian golfers face their final chance to join the US PGA Tour for the 2013-14 season.
The secondary Web.com Tour Finals wrap up this week with the Web.com Tour Championship at TPC Sawgrass (Valley Course) in Florida, after which the final 25 cards to the elite tour will be awarded.
While Bronson La’Cassie has already booked his ticket to the big stage for the first time via his regular-season performance and Scott Gardiner has earned his way back with solid play in the first three finals tournaments, 10 other Aussies need a result this week.
Led by Alistair Presnell, who sits just inside the cut-off mark of the leading 25 money winners in the finals, the Australian contingent is hopeful of an 11th-hour bid. Adam Crawford is the next most likely to make a move, sitting just two spots outside the mark while veterans Mathew Goggin, Rod Pampling and Nick O’Hern are the next best at 13, 14 and 15 spots outside the qualification zone respectively.
For the remaining Australians in Aron Price, Cameron Percy, Nick Flanagan, Nathan Green and Ashley Hall, it is going to take something ultra impressive – a win or something very close to it to join the world’s best.
“It’s good to be here with a chance even though I didn’t play the way I would have liked last year,” Presnell told AAP. “I’m right there on the good side of the bubble knowing a reasonable finish this week will get the job done.”
Presnell is confident he can push aside the pressure and heeded the words of fellow Victorian Jarrod Lyle recently to turn around his form.
“I’ll just try to convince myself it’s another week and try to hit the fairways and greens,” he said.
“I just have to not over-think things. It wasn’t until recently I noticed I was trying too hard and then I remembered reading about Jarrod Lyle when he said he made the mistake of trying to push harder against the top guys when it was his usual game that got him there.”
The new PGA Tour wraparound season officially starts at the Frys.com Open in California on October 10.
Scott, Day, Marc Leishman, Ogilvy, Matt Jones, Aaron Baddeley, John Senden, Greg Chalmers, Stuart Appleby, Robert Allenby, Steven Bowditch, La’Cassie and Gardiner are currently the only Australians eligible for the season.
Lyle is widely expected to also make a return at some stage in the new year on a major medical exemption after overcoming his second bout of leukaemia.