The 2nd Australian Major... TONIGHT

True, Tiger tees it up on Thursday. But the Australian PGA Championship begins TONIGHT!

Well, it's tonight in the US.



The course is the RACV Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast, a very nice course. The defending champion is Harold Varner III, a North Carolina boy (like me) who made this event his first big professional title last year.

This event was part of the Australian Triple Crown -- the Australian Open, the Australian Masters and the Australian PGA Championship. However, the Australian Masters wasn't played in 2016 and the official website still says IMG "will unveil its plans for the event in the coming months." Obviously IMG hasn't announced anything yet, so once again there will only be two Australian majors. The PGA will be the final big event of 2017.

But what an event it should be! Sergio will be back for the first time since 2010. He'll be joined by Adam Scott, Marc Leishman, and Matt Jones. Wade Ormsby, who picked up his first ET win last weekend, and Australian Open runner-up Jonas Blixt are also in the field.

Once again, we fans in the US get prime time golf. GC's live coverage begins tonight at 8:30pm ET, so you don't have to worry about missing any of Tiger's play.

You Thought Golf Was Over? O-o-o-o-oh No!

It's true that the LPGA and PGA Tours are finished for the year -- other than special events, that is -- but the ET is beginning their new season and it's Major Season Down Under! Let me get you up-to-speed on today's (Wednesday) events.



At 7:30pm ET tonight GC starts with their Pre Game show. There should be some early coverage from Australia as they lead into...

The Emirates Australian Open at 8pm ET. Jason Day and Jordan Spieth are headlining the event and Jordan is the guy to beat, having gone 1st, 2nd, 1st over the last three years. You've no doubt heard that Cameron McCormick, Jordan's coach and an Aussie to boot, will be on Jordan's bag this week while Michael Greller is at home "caddying" for his wife and new baby.

In addition, this is Jason's first time teeing up Down Under in four years. I'm hoping for a battle between him and Jordan by the end of the week.

This is one of the few times we Americans get to see some of the Aussie players like Craig Perry and James Nitties (personal faves of mine). Of course, some of the Aussies who regularly play the PGA Tour like Geoff Ogilvy and Rod Pampling will tee it up as well. And I love getting to see the event during prime time rather than in the middle of our night!

Which brings me to the UBS Hong Kong Open at 1am ET. Technically that's Thursday morning here in the US, but it's still the middle of the night and there's only a couple of hours of coverage. (Then the Aussie Open coverage repeats.)

But this event has a strong line-up. Sergio is playing in Hong Kong for his first time ever! And Justin Rose, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Kiradech Aphibarnrat, Rafa Cabrera-Bello, and Chase Koepka (Brooks's brother) are just a few of the names we ET fans will recognize. (Okay, PGA Tour fans should recognize them too, but you know what I mean.)

So the 2017 golf season is over... and we still get 7.5 hours of live golf in prime time! Is this a great week or what?

Primetime Golf Tonight

Ah yes, it's time for some primetime golf tonight. (At least it is here in the US.)  The ISPS HANDA World Cup of Golf is being played at the awesome Kingston Heath Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia.

And as I understand it, the World Cup is back to being a team event. Not "including" a team component, but being a team event only. I think that's good news.



Here's the basic setup for this year's event, as posted at golf.com:

There are 28 two-man teams playing this event; the scoring is 72 holes of stroke play. They'll alternate rounds of foursomes and four-balls, and the winning pair will split the $2.56million winners' check.

None of the OWGR Top5 are playing. Jason Day, defending individual champ, is perhaps the most noticeable. (You didn't really expect to see Rory or DJ or Jordan or Henrik either, did you?) But this event still carries some weight with players like Adam Scott, Rickie Fowler, Hideki Matsuyama and Graeme McDowell, so there will be plenty of favorites to watch.

PGATOUR.com did a "featured groups" post which also lists all the players from each country, so you can find out when your favorite group tees off.

And here's GC's TV schedule as listed in the golf.com article.

• Wednesday - 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. EST
• Thursday - 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. EST, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. EST
• Friday - 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. EST, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. EST
• Saturday - 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. EST, 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. EST
• Sunday - 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. EST 

Of course, GC will do some pre-game shows as well. Tonight's show starts at 7pm ET.

The player mix on some of the teams looks very interesting, so this should make for some good TV. I'm intrigued by the Italian team of Francesco Molinari and Matteo Manessaro, neither of whom is a power player. But in this format, I think they could be a real sleeper pick.

Chalk One Up for the Old Guys

If you didn't watch the Australian Masters because Adam Scott wasn't a factor -- his driver deserted him this week -- you missed seeing a bit of history.

You see, all 56-year-old Peter Senior did was win his third Australian Masters gold jacket.



Peter is no stranger to making history. In 2010 he won the Australian PGA Championship at age 51. Then in 2012 he won the Australian Open -- the event Jordan Spieth won last year -- at age 53.

And now he's won the Australian Masters again -- 20 years after his second win -- by 2 shots. Do you understand what he's done? He's won all three legs of the Australian Triple Crown in his 50s. That's just impressive beyond belief.

Just as a side note, one of the three players who finished in second place was amateur Bryson DeChambeau, who won both the NCAA Division I championship and the US Amateur this year. This finish certainly bodes well for him. He left school to try and play his way into shape for Augusta next year before turning pro, and this is definitely a good start.

In the meantime you'll probably be hearing plenty about this over the next week because it's just such an unusual accomplishment. Peter has yet to win on the Champions Tour... but I'm pretty sure this win will minimize his disappointment!