What an amazing end to the 2023 Australian PGA Championship at the Royal Queensland Golf Club in Brisbane where we saw two excellent challengers vying to take home the Joe Kirkwood Cup – Aussie’s own Min Woo Lee & Riyuka Hoshino from Japan. Now Min Woo fired off with some early disappointing scores where Hoshino stole the lead for a while, but a few of his extraordinary shots out of nowhere from difficult areas including a eagle on the Par 5 9th have all but confirmed his championship win at -20.
Fair play to have a Japanese player finish well in 2nd for another year this time in Hoshino after Ryo Histasune last year to Cameron Smith, even though it can be a bit hard to watch seeing someone win that tournament. As said, he was an early threat on Championship day but a series of Min Woo’s masterclasses saw him fall short by 3 strokes (-17) towards the end.
Plus, great to see a few more Aussies wrap it up at their best with Todd Sinnott finishing comfortably inside the Top 10 in Tied 7th & Marc Leishman being the best scorer for the final round alone (7 under 64) in outright 3rd ahead of 4th placed Curtis Luck, who always kept the front-runners in check from Day 2. And shoutout to a few Spanish-speaking trio also rounding out the Top 10 including Chile’s Joaquin Niemann (5th) as well as both Spaniards down in Tied 7th Rafa Cabrera Bello & Opening Day leader Joel Moscatel.
The first of the two big Australian PGA tournaments is done now where they will be back at the same place, same time in late November next year. For now, there’s still the Australian Open to come this Thursday through to next Sunday at The Australian Golf Club in Rosebery, Sydney.
