Big Guns Ready to Fire Australian Title Hopes

Melbourne, Australia: The Australian squads for the Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation's showpiece tournaments in 2022 are full of firepower.

For the 13th edition of the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC) at Thailand’s Amata Spring Country Club (October 27-30), a seven-strong Australian line-up will be spearheaded by the World Amateur Team Championships representatives Connor McKinney, Hayden Hopewell and Harrison Crowe.

They will be joined by Stanford University star Karl Vilips, two-time Australian Junior Amateur champion Jeffrey Guan, 2019 Junior Presidents Cup representative Joshua Greer and 2019 US Mid-Amateur champion Lukas Michel.

Meanwhile, for the fourth Women's Amateur Asia-Pacific (WAAP) at Siam Country Club (November 3-6), Australia will send six players, led by Kirsten Rudgeley, Kelsey Bennett and Maddison Hinson-Tolchard, the trio that flew the Australian flag at last month’s World Amateur Team Championships in Paris.

Completing the line-up will be Karrie Webb scholarship recipient Caitlin Peirce, Australian Amateur runner-up Justice Bosio and 15-year-old sensation Sarah Hammett.

Brad James, Golf Australia’s General Manager High Performance, said: “The 13 players chosen to represent Australia form a very strong group and we’re excited about their prospects on the international stage.

“A number of our players have taken some significant strides this year by performing strongly in tournaments at home and overseas, and representing their country again with the opportunity to book their ticket to two major championships is another great step in their development.

“The younger players also bring a nice balance to the squad as they begin to taste what competing internationally is all about, and push to get their names high on leaderboards.”

The winner of the men’s event receives an invitation to The Masters and The Open Championship, while the women’s champion earns a spot in the field at the AIG Women’s Open, the Amundi Evian Championship and, for the first time, the Chevron Championship, as well as exemptions for the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and Hana Financial Group Championship.

Australia has twice provided the winner of the AAC – Antonio Murdaca at Royal Melbourne in 2014 and Curtis Luck, who triumphed in Korea in 2016.

The AAC was created in 2009 as a joint venture initiative to develop the game by the APGC, the Masters Tournament and The R&A.

The best performance by an Australian in the WAAP came from Bennett last year, when she ended joint runner-up to Japan’s Mizuki Hashimoto in Abu Dhabi.

The WAAP was developed by The R&A and the APGC to unearth emerging young talent and provide a route for Asia's elite women amateurs to the international stage.