School Is In Session at the 2023 Sandbelt Invitational
When male and female pros and amateurs play together in Melbourne, life lessons and golf advice ensue
MELBOURNE, Australia—The other day a young girl ran through the parking lot at Victoria Golf Club, chasing down U.S. Open champ Geoff Ogilvy. She had watched him play at last year’s Sandbelt Invitational and was informed by her father that Ogilvy is kind of a big deal. What the girl lacked in height she made up for in enthusiasm. Ogilvy signed her hat and afterward was thunderstruck to discover that Fuyu Yang, 11, would be competing alongside him in the the third annual Sandbelt Invitational.
Fuyu was one of the stars of Monday’s first round, conducted at elegant Victoria Golf Club, where Ogilvy grew up playing and a statue of the great Peter Thomson looks out over the 10th tee (above). She is barely taller than her driver but takes an almighty swing at the ball, and on a rain-softened course playing 6,247 yards she went around in a mere 78 strokes. Fuyu was particularly proud of a long birdie putt she made on the 12th hole after having suffered back-to-back double bogeys. She credited the bounceback in part to observing the cool professionalism of her playing partner Marcus Fraser, 45, a three-time winner on the European Tour. “Sometimes I get a bit angry and if I have one mistake I can make continuous mistakes,” said Fuyu (below). “So the fact that he controlled his emotions after one mistake and recovered is something I can learn.”
The opportunity for this kind of real-time mentorship is part of what inspired Ogilvy and Michael Clayton to launch the Sandbelt Invitational, a feel-good event that pairs a wide variety of players. There are five tournaments-within-a-tournament, with every player competing on the overall leaderboard but also individual champs for the low male and female amateur and low male and female pro. (The leaderboard is based on relationship to par, not total strokes, as Vic was a par-70 for the men but a par-71 for the women.) After one round, Jasmine (Jazy) Roberts, an 18-year old am, is tied for the overall lead at 5 under with Jack Thompson, a promising young pro from South Australia. Roberts began her round by driving the green of the short, dangerous par-4 1st hole, for a tone-setting birdie. Prior to that, during a long rain delay, she received a little education on what it takes to succeed at the highest level. While Jazy scrolled Tik Tok and ate two breakfasts, she sheepishly observed that defending champion Cam Davis, a 28 year-old Aussie who won the PGA Tour’s Rocket Mortgage Classic in 2021, was hitting balls in the rain.
Other lessons are more direct. Melbourne native Matthew Griffin, a well-traveled pro, used his local knowledge to fire an opening round 4 under, and afterward he took aside playing partner Seabil Leong, 15, for an avuncular chat. On a practice swing during the round, Seabil had nicked a tree branch on her follow-through. If the branch had broken it could have led to a penalty stroke. Seabil did not know the rule and was grateful for the education.
Meanwhile, strapping amateur Quinn Croker was paired with Ogilvy, and he treated the round as a four-hour seminar. “It was very special,” says Croker. “I learned plenty. I asked him a lot of questions. He obviously has so much knowledge. Pretty much the main takeaway was, Play more, and play competitively as much as you can—you’ll get better as long as you’re competing against people. People get so focused on the practice range they don’t learn to compete. He said, even now, back in the States, he’ll compete with guys who are on the PGA Tour or Korn Ferry Tour—they play for money, they play for food, whatever it is.”
Along with mentorship, the other pillar of the Sandbelt is showing off the many terrific courses around Melbourne. The second round will be conducted at Peninsula Kingswood, a neoclassic that Ogilvy helped design. The third round moves to Yarra Yarra and then comes Thursday’s finish at incomparable Royal Melbourne. Nicolas Colsaerts is making his tournament debut at 42. He has won the national championships of China and France as well as the World Match Play Championship; played in the 2012 Ryder Cup (dusting Tiger Woods in a Friday fourball match, below); and he represented his native Belgium at the 2016 Olympics. After having played like, he says, “an absolute pig” all year on the European Tour, Colsaerts turned up at a tournament with a modest purse looking for a little magic. “Playing courses on the Sandbelt is so inspiring, the scene is there to inspire you to hit great shots,” he said after opening at 2 under, good for 12th place. “It’s a treat. I haven’t been here in a couple of years—the first look when I drove in, you just see the bunkering, and it’s like, Oh, this is going to be cool.”
The Sandbelt Invitational is the perfect balm for these rancorous times, with its good vibes and wondrous playing fields. This is going to be cool.