MELBOURNE, AUS. – March, 3, 2005 – Past champions Peter Senior and Mike Harwood will line up alongside young guns Steven Bowditch, Nick Flanagan, and James Nitties in the National Australia Bank 2005 Victorian PGA Championship at Sanctuary Lakes in Victoria.
The Victorian PGA Championship is the second Von Nida Tour event on the 2005 Australasian Tour calendar, with the Victorian Open, won by NSW Kurt Barnes, the first event that was played back in January.
Senior, who won the Victorian PGA event in 1987 and Harwood, who took the title almost a decade later in 1996, will take on Australia's hottest young golfer at the moment, Queensland's Steven Bowditch. Just two weeks ago Bowditch won the Nationwide Tour co-sanctioned Jacobs Creek Open at Royal Adelaide and after finishing second behind Peter O'Malley on the weekend at the ING NZ PGA Championship in Christchurch, is now also the leading money winner on the US Nationwide Tour.
The evergreen Senior, one of Australia's most consistently successful players over the last twenty years with 26 titles to his name, most recently won the 2003 Cadbury Schweppes PGA Championships and played the full Australasian Tour Calendar in 2004 making 4 top 10 finishes.
The field also includes some of the rising stars in Australian golf, led by 21-year-old Steven Bowditch. Bowditch roared onto the scene over the last month with a dominating display that saw him lead after every round of the Jacob's Creek Open, finally winning by five shots. He then almost snatched the ING NZ PGA title with a course record equalling final round to force a play off with eventual winner Peter O'Malley. He is without doubt the in form player on the Tour and will be hard to beat.
James Nitties and Nick Flanagan are two young graduates of the Jack Newton Junior Golf Foundation and have both tasted success in recent years. Flanagan's results include 3rd at the 2004 ANZ Championship and most notably, he was the 2003 US Amateur Champion. In January this year he was one of four qualifiers for the 2005 Open Championships, when he contested International Final Qualifying at Kingston Heath in Victoria.
Nitties had the golfing world stand up and take note when he led the 2004 Cadbury Schweppes PGA Championships at Coolum at the half way and third round marks in just his fourth professional tournament. He eventually finished second behind Peter Lonard. Nitties was the 2003 New Zealand Amateur Champion.
Winners of the Victorian PGA Championship include defending champion Martin Doyle, Craig Carmichael, Roger Davis, Stuart Appleby, Peter Senior and golfing greats Peter Thomson, Kel Nagle and Bruce Devlin.
The Victorian PGA Championship is one of 12 events on the Von Nida Tour for 2005.
The Von Nida Tour is a joint initiative between the Australian PGA and the Australasian PGA Tour to provide an important "athlete pathway" for members of both organisations to gain much needed experience and competition to prepare them for their careers as professional golfers.
The structure of the Von Nida Tour will guarantee that a player has every chance to progress through each stage of his development to the ultimate goal of playing in the elite events that make up the Australasian Tour.
Source: PGA Tour
