Neergaard-Petersen Wins Aussie Open Thriller
The Dane earns his first Masters invite while Cameron Smith suffers heartbreaking runner-up finish. Royal Melbourne delivers one of the best championships of the year.
We knew it’d be a Better Than Most week. But one of the best tournaments of the year?
Historically consequential and wildly entertaining, the Crown Australian Open offered another pesky reminder that the golf tournament recipe is simple to cook and a pleasure to digest.
Boil four days of golf played over a profound design.
Bake in big galleries, enjoying a large and diverse international field.
Mix in a 36-hole cut to bring an edge to the Friday proceedings.
Sprinkle in some history, get lucky with the weather, finish strong, and serve.
In a pro golf world populated by otherwise smart adults clouded by relentless bouts of desperate dumbing-down, the 2025 Australian Open stood out in a week that also, absurdly, offered up two other men’s pro events.
Two of the three were played under the DP World Tour banner. Brilliant.
Even with the world’s best spread across the globe, the other events never had a chance against Royal Melbourne playing first, firm, and on edge. The nuances. The setup (including wisely not cutting greens Thursday). That fine line between a good and three-putt inducing shots. And incredible crowds encircling fairways and greens, bringing a rare combination of intimacy and electricity to the proceedings. Having home country stalwarts Cameron Smith, Adam Scott, Min Woo Lee, and Elvis Smylie raised the stakes, while other familiar Australian vets Geoff Ogilvy, Greg Chalmers, and Marc Leishman made the weekend. Best of all, the week played out minus any lame clickbaity dramas, talk of money, or a sniff of tedium. The pure golf vibe all set the stage for 26-year-old Rasmus Neergaard Petersen for his career breakthrough.
While the final round featured a nice back-and-forth tussle for the lead, things turned spicy at the par-5 17th when Neergaard-Petersen’s workmanlike birdie matched Smith’s brilliant up-and-down. The duo headed to the Royal Melbourne’s 18th tied for the lead at 15-under-par. The group’s other playing partner, Si Woo Kim, sat a stroke back after he birdied the 17th.
The 18th hole bends left around tea trees and normally plays as the East Course 18th. The hole features no fairway bunkers, but like so many holes at RMGC, it rewards placement on one side of the fairway depending on the hole location. A swarm of greenside bunkers cling to the huge putting surface, where a huge spine running down the center rewards a left side drive and super-precise approach to Sunday’s back right flag.
After Neegaard-Petersen and Kim both lost their approach shots to the right of the green—Kim at least had the excuse of needing a birdie—Smith saw his chance to win the championship outright. With the opponents facing delicate recovery shots to make par, Smith played a cautious approach, landing in the left center before veering left off the spine and leaving a treacherous 75-footer.
Neegaard-Petersen’s approach shot ended up on a slab of heather and native grass dubbed “Dunk’s Island,” after New South Welshman Billy Dunk, who saved par from there to beat David Graham in the 1975 Chrysler Classic.
“I was nowhere on 18, I had nothing from the right, and somehow, some way I managed to get it up and down,” Neergaard-Petersen said. The Dane entered the week 82nd in the world after a recent T3 in the DP World Tour Championship. He started contending several times this year in starts on both sides of the Atlantic. But nothing could prepare him for this moment except a bunch of practice off of hardpan lies. (H/T Jamie Kennedy)
The former Oklahoma State All-American clipped a beauty off Dunk’s Island to about 20 feet, but still faced a tough, left-to-right par saver. Smith countered with a fantastic first putt to five feet. Neergaard-Petersen’s par putt caught enough of the left edge to fall into the hole before Smith, one of the planet’s best putters, missed to the shock of a huge crowd surrounding the green.
“I was actually quite surprised when I got up there,” Neergaard-Petersen said. “I thought it was just in the right trap, which again, it’s not an easy shot, but it’s certainly better than where I was.”
The champion put his chances of a par into (statistical) context by eventually calling it a “one-in-a-hundred” save.
“The lie, the difficult circumstances, I think about where I hit it (on the green), I could probably get it there, I don’t know, 20 percent of the time. Then 40 per cent of the time, it’s in the front bunker, and 40 percent it’s way further. And then from there you have a 30-footer, which you’re probably only making 5 percent.”
Already having qualified for The Open next year thanks to DP World Tour play that also earned him one of ten PGA Tour cards, Neergaard-Petersen’s winning putt clinched his first official victory and a spot in next year’s Masters.
“To win my first event and for it to be the Australian Open, which is such a historic event, to be able to put my name among those names is unbelievable,” said Neergaard-Petersen. “A lot of people that asked me why I decided to go down here and that, being able to have a chance to put my name on such a historic trophy, was definitely one of them.”
But it was the Masters invite that made the journey career-changing.
“It means the world to me,” said Neergaard-Petersen. “Growing up, The Masters wasn’t the first tournament that I watched, but as soon as I watched that tournament, it was the first event that I was like, ‘If I one day become a professional golfer, that’s the event I want to play.’ It’s a dream come true, and I can’t wait for April.”
For Cam Smith, the rough ending masked what was a fantastic week that could rejuvenate his game. Smith arrived at Royal Melbourne off seven missed cuts in his last seven OWGR events—including all four majors this year. The 32-year-old native of Brisbane has essentially disappeared since winning the 2022 Open at St Andrews and going to LIV where there’s Royal Greens. (No relation to Royal Melbourne.)
The Ripper co-Captain declined to speak after the final round.
Rory McIlroy’s presence in the tournament for the first time in ten years made his Friday afternoon push to reach the weekend almost as compelling as Sunday’s finish.
“I said to Adam [Scott] walking up in the first, it didn’t feel like a Friday afternoon round,” he said. “It felt like we were going out in the final group on a Sunday. Just that scene on the first tee was amazing. And then walking up the last, and everyone’s still here, and it’s incredible.”
McIlroy finished the week T14 following rounds of 72-68-68-69 (-7).
In the other tournament-within-the-tournament, Si Woo Kim (3rd), South Africa’s Michael Hollick (4th), and Adam Scott (5th) qualified for The 154th Open at Royal Birkdale via the Open Qualifying Series. Scott made a key birdie at the 17th to move ahead of former U.S. Amateur champion Jose Luis Ballester. Scott has played an incredible 97 straight majors and is in good shape to play all four heading to next year. The 45-year-old will still need a (likely) invitation to the PGA and a higher ranking to get into the U.S. Open without going to Final Qualifying.
While the Australian Open is just fine on its own merits as long as it plays a Sandbelt course, the addition of a Masters invite and the annual Qualifying Series stop should have the Lords of Augusta and St Andrews smiling. Their new “national open” push added even more verve to the Royal Melbourne proceedings. Particularly when juxtaposed against the other events offering OWGR points in the Bahamas and South Africa.
“If you compare this tournament to the other two tournaments going on in the world of golf this week, there’s no comparison,” McIlroy said. “Yes, the field in The Bahamas is stronger than the one here, but in terms of atmosphere, of golf course, basically everything else you’re looking for in a tournament, I can’t think of many better than this.”
What else?
