WITH superstars like Minjee Lee, Hannah Green and Min Woo Lee waving the flag internationally and Western Australian players contending nearly every week on the Australasian Tour, it seems golf in our nation’s largest and most remote state has never been stronger.
Hannah Green joined her good friend Minjee Lee in the world’s top 10 last month after winning her second HSBC Women’s World Championship in Singapore and US PGA Tour winner Min Woo Lee is considered Australia’s most likely next major winner.
Sandgropers Connor McKinney, Jordan Doull and Haydn Barron are already winners on this season’s Australasian Tour, Brady Watt has been a runner-up, and Curtis Luck has had a string of near misses.
Western Australia is represented on the DP World Tour by Jason Scrivener, Ryan Peake and McKinney, Kirsten Rudgeley is contending on the Ladies European Tour, and there is a wealth of amateur talent, including Spencer Harrison and Isabella Leniartek, developing their games in the west.
The state could also lay some claim to US PGA Tour champions Aldrich Potgieter and Karl Vilips, who spent their formative years in Western Australia before leaving to seek fame and fortune overseas.
And if golfers from our most western state are already punching well above their weight, Golf Western Australia’s High Performance Manager Rick Kulacz suggests that even better things are in store.
Golf WA’s new High Performance Program, which identifies, develops and supports the state’s most talented young players, was launched earlier this year and Kulacz, a former touring professional himself, is excited about its potential.
The new program starts with talent identification and development and supports junior golfers’ path to state squads. Funding is earned by meeting and maintaining benchmarks over time, and established professionals attend clinics to pass on tips and advice to the young players.
Programs are in place across the state for even younger golfers. At Belgravia Leisure-managed courses, for example, a nine-hole TeeMates series for junior players was introduced last year and was so popular participation numbers doubled this year
But no junior series, or even a world-class high-performance program, could explain the emergence of so many Western Australian champions in recent times.
Kulacz says a key reason is the quality of Western Australian coaches, and mentions Ritchie Smith, David Milne and former state coach Craig Bishop.
Smith, Australia’s most decorated golf coach, mentors a comparatively small group of elite players which includes the Lee siblings, Peake, Green and Elvis Smiley.
He delivers care, patience, knowledge and experience and, in return, demands a strong work ethic, maintaining that talent alone is not enough to guarantee success.
Milne, whose philosophy is to help people become the best they can be, coaches McKinney, as well as Kim Felton and Michael Sim.
Kulacz says Western Australian players receive a lot of support – not just from organisations like Golf Australia, but from parents, coaches and service providers.
He says coaches like Smith assemble expert support teams – including a psychologist, physiotherapist and bio-mechanist – and insist that their charges work with their crews.
“They’ve all got great teams around them and they build a lot of trust,” he said.
Kulacz also believes Western Australia’s isolation – Perth is the most remote capital city in the world, and the sunniest – plays a role in the success of its golfers.
“We’re in a different time zone,” he says. “We’re a long way away from anywhere and there’s a sort of underdog mentality that makes us all strive a little bit harder.
“We’re used to travel and we know how to cope,” he says, pointing out that Western Australian golfers are a tight-knit group, who hang out with each other.
“When you’re far away from home that makes things a little bit easier,” he said.
ED NOTE: And the above coming from Peter who is a Queenslander!
However, he does mount a strong argument when it comes to the current success being enjoyed by our golfers from the west. There is no doubt WA is producing plenty of quality players, with the following pages of this edition of Inside Golf, not to mention our April cover emphasising his point.
Min Woo Lee has stepped up to become the next ‘big thing’ of Australian golf, and we look forward to what he might be able to produce at Augusta this month, then in golf’s biggest championships that follow.
And when it comes to women’s golf, Hannah Green became the first Australian in 12 years to win our national open (see page 7), just two weeks after a victory in Singapore (see page 10), while Min Woo’s big sister Minjee is seemingly a contender in every significant event in which she plays.
The young guns, as pointed out, both professional and those still competing at an amateur level are also making their mark both at home and abroad, and in the west they also lay claim to Elvis Smylie these days, a Queenslander being coached by a Western Australian.
Whatever it is over there, the courses, the coaches, maybe it’s in the water, it seems to be working. WA golfers are underdogs no more!
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