Nick Voke wins Webex Players Series Sydney
Nick Voke continued New Zealand’s recent golden run on the PGA Tour of Australasia, taking out the Webex Players Series Sydney title. And there’s a moment the part-time content creator is keen to watch back.
There comes a time in most sporting contests, not all, when the result seems inevitable long before the actual finish. And so it seemed behind the 13th green at Castle Hill Country Club where, if you listened closely enough, you might have heard the heart of a professional golfer shattering into hundreds of pieces.
It hardly seemed fair. Golf rarely is.
But after scrapping and clawing and scrambling to stay in touch all day, Jake McLeod had to watch leader Nick Voke’s putt from another postcode climb ridges, twist and turn around breaks and then gently drop into the hole at almost its last roll. There’s no technology to say how far Voke’s putt was from.
“Seventy-five foot,” Voke snaps back, clearly delighted he has another reel for his side hustle as a golf content creator. “It was crazy.”
That was one way to describe it.
“When I walked back to the caddie I said to Tom (Power Horan), ‘a good putt is inside eight feet, right?’ He said, ‘well, you’re a content guy. Just hole it and give it a good roll’,” said Voke, the world No. 602. “I want to see it. It’s some good media to save for later.”
McLeod said: “I had a putt straight up the hill, it was still 20 feet, more often than not from where he was it’s a three putt rather than one putt. I was up there one of the rounds and it was pretty dead. I thought it would be a two-shot swing, or at least one … and it didn’t happen.”
For the last two months, McLeod has been the most consistent golfer by far on the PGA Tour of Australasia. He’s led tournaments after the first round, he’s led tournaments into the weekend, he’s led tournaments into the final round. He’s led them everywhere but when it counts: after the final putt has dropped.
Having taken the lead early in the second round of the Webex Players Series Sydney event, Voke held it until the last. Just.
McLeod trailed by five shots with five to play after the otherworldly putt from the New Zealander, before it was four with four left, three and three, and just one with two to go after a birdie-bogey swing on the 16th.
Yet Voke (-25) hung on for his first win since 2018 on the PGA Tour China with a closing three-under 69 after McLeod (-24) narrowly missed birdie chances on the 17th and 18th holes before carding a 66.
“I thought I was too far in front,” Voke said. “It just goes to show golf is hard, winning is hard, things have to go your way.
“[McLeod] was like that bad fart that doesn’t go away. I was five up with five to play and cruising. ‘Clouds’ is going to be in my nightmares going forward. He was lurking all day.”
Does he feel sorry for him?
“Not at all,” Voke said. “Not one bit. He’s a sensational player playing so well. We’re obviously all good mates and I’m sure he’ll get one soon.”
It’s easy to say McLeod’s time will come. But with each passing event, it’s hard to think the weight of not having won a professional event since 2017 just carries a little heavier on his shoulders. He deserves one. Yet to win a golf tournament is incredibly hard. Just ask him.
“It’s hard work,” he said. “I did a better job this weekend. I think it’s coming. I’ve put in a lot of work so hopefully it’s soon.”
Voke edges closer to Webex Players Series triumph
Nick Voke edged closer to extending New Zealand’s recent golden run on the PGA Tour of Australasia as the part-time online content creator strengthened his grip on the Webex Players Series Sydney title.
Just a fortnight after countryman Josh Geary was the runaway winner of the Victorian Open, Voke rode a hot front nine in his third round to open up a four-shot lead heading into the final day at Castle Hill Country Club.
Voke, 30, has started spending some of his time helping create YouTube golf content while juggling his professional ambitions, but flashed all of his skills en route to a five-under 67 on Saturday.
He had a huge dose of luck when his tee shot into the 170-metre par three 17th, featuring a long water carry, eventually stopped only centimetres above a concrete wall which bordered the hazard. Voke managed to make an up-and-down for par.
And he then recovered from a wobbly second shot into the par-five 18th, but there was enough there to encourage his rivals after he finished his round with 11 straight pars and couldn’t engineer an unassailable buffer.
Queensland’s Jake McLeod, who has been flirting with a first professional win since 2017 with a number of strong performances already this year, emerged from the pack to be Voke’s biggest challenger.
McLeod made it two straight days without a bogey as he signed for a seven-under 65, which included a near miss on the last which would have further chipped into Voke’s margin.
Voke had an eagle and four birdies in his first seven holes before cooling off with the long sequence of pars as he fine tunes his game for next week’s New Zealand Open in Queenstown.
Asian Tour star Travis Smyth (66), who made a hole-in-one during his second round, heads a trio at 15-under after making four birdies on his final four holes on Saturday.
New Zealand’s Tyler Wood (64) and Queensland’s Jack Munro (67) will also start the final round seven strokes behind Voke.
LPGA Tour graduate Cassie Porter (-14) was the best of the women, carding a nine-under 63 with two eagles during her third round, to share sixth with Ryan Peake (65).
“The opportunities are definitely out there if you want to take advantage of them,” Porter said. “It just requires a few good shots and hopefully some putts dropping.
“There’s a lot of opportunities at the start [of the round], and if you can take advantage it provides a good base for some momentum.”
SMYTH STRIKES HOLE-IN-ONE, IN HOT PURSUIT OF KIWI GUN
The last time he had a hole-in-one in a professional tournament, Travis Smyth did it at Royal Liverpool on his Open Championship debut.
The hole was at the pointy end of a debate which raged all week about a turtle back green which funnelled balls towards pot bunkers all around it. Was it fair on those who played it? Smyth didn’t care. He was the only one to have an ace in the 151st staging of the famous tournament.
On Friday, Smyth had his fourth hole-in-one during competition … before 8.30am on a Friday morning in Sydney’s north-west. It was watched by almost no one.
“The Open Championship was a little bit different,” Smyth laughed.
The ace on Castle Hill Country Club’s 11th hole, playing 151 metres during the second round, was all the more sweeter because Smyth didn’t even see the eight-iron go in the hole.
“I was trying to hit it a little bit past and to the left, 10 feet left,” Smyth said. “It went straight into the sun and I said to (my caddie), ‘where is that?’ He said, ‘it’s right at it’. Then it was in. I lost it completely.
“If anything, it narrowed my focus a bit more (afterwards). I could hole out more shots. I was standing on the fairway and saying to my caddie, ‘it changes your mentality. You feel like you can do exactly what you want the ball to do’.”
The former LIV golfer used the hole-in-one to springboard to a four-under 68 on Friday to keep him in contention in the Webex Players Series Sydney event.
It’s a rare appearance at home for Smyth (-9), who mainly plies his trade on the Asian Tour, and the pre-tournament favourite has some ground to make up on New Zealand’s Nick Voke (-17), who carded a scintillating nine-under 63 in his second round.
Like fellow Kiwi Josh Geary who won this month’s Victorian Open, Voke doesn’t devote all his time to professional golf these days. He’s taken to making social media content more regularly on the hugely popular Taco Golf platform alongside other content creators.
“Maybe there’s a secret in being a part-time player,” Voke said. “Maybe that’s the key.
“I think someone asked me the other day: what percentage of my golf is pro and what percentage is YouTube? I said 75 to 80 per cent pro and 20 to 25 YouTube. But I reckon there’s a secret in that 20 to 25 per cent helping the rest.”
Voke went to his accommodation for the week after his round and promptly started cutting up YouTube videos. He’ll worry about his third round when he’s on course.
“Us pros can get in the grind and try to do too much, try to be perfect, and to genuinely have something to look forward to outside of the golf course is amazing,” Voke said.
“Secondly, I’ve learned so much about myself playing with them and using those lessons when I compete. The last six months have been incredible and I’m excited for the next six.”
Voke is ahead by two from first round leader Declan O’Donovan (-15), the NSW amateur firing a second round six-under 66 which included a near hole-in-one on the fourth.
“Three inches,” O’Donovan said of how close he was to holing out. “I’ve never had a hole-in-one. I’ve had three albatrosses, but never a hole-in-one, not in practice or anything. That’s probably the closest I’ve ever come.
“It was a great number and it was a great flight going straight at it. My caddie told me to go six feet left because it was a better putt and I told him, ‘yes’.
“But I was never going to.”
NSW AMATEUR A STAR ON THE RISE
A year after shooting one of the worst rounds of his short career, NSW amateur Declan O’Donovan again stamped himself as a star on the rise after surging to an early lead at the Webex Players Series Sydney event on Thursday.
O’Donovan, who was given the honour of being paired with Cameron Smith and Lucas Herbert for the first two rounds of last year’s NSW Open, upstaged the more seasoned professionals with a nine-under 63 at Castle Hill Country Club.
The 21-year-old signed for a six-over 78 in the opening round of last year’s corresponding event.
“If you go from this event just a year ago until now, I’m a completely different person and a completely different golfer,” O’Donovan said. “It’s nice to see a round like today happen.
“I think it was nice little wake-up call (last year) to how good you’ve got to play to compete out here. I teed it up today definitely seeing a score like that. I’m very happy with how I played.”
O’Donovan, who last month became the first person to defend his NSW Amateur title in more than 50 years, had 10 birdies and a bogey in the idyllic morning conditions to lead Nathan Barbieri and New Zealand’s Nick Voke (64) by a stroke.
Having also made a weekend charge at the Victorian Open, O’Donovan said he has no immediate plans to turn professional as he plots the next step in his career.
“There’s a couple of things I’d like to check off as an amateur beforehand, stuff like Eisenhower Cup,” he said. “I know it hasn’t been selected, but that’s what I’m going for.
“The US Amateur and a couple of big pro events I’d (also) like to play in. I think next year will be a good time for me. I’m not really on a strict schedule until I turn pro, when it feels right I’ll go for it.”
Barbieri was bogey free in his round while LPGA Tour rookie Cassie Porter was the best of the women in the dual gender event with a seven-under 65.
Men and women play from their respective tees but compete against each other in the Webex Players Series events, which are held all across the country during the PGA Tour of Australasia season.
“I really only hit one bad shot all day and that was the tee shot on 10,” Barbieri said. “Other than that it was fairways and greens and holing some putts.”
Pre-tournament favourite and Asian Tour regular Travis Smyth carded a five-under 67 to be lurking ominously before the second round.
Smyth, who dipped his toe in the waters against elite competition in the first year of LIV Golf, is making a rare appearance in Australia after recently returning his base to Sydney.
Originally published as Nick Voke wins Webex Players Series Sydney
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