{"id":281885,"date":"2025-11-13T14:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T14:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/281885\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T14:09:13","slug":"the-future-of-pro-golf-pga-tour-of-australasia-qualifier-held-on-indoor-simulator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/281885\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future Of Pro Golf? PGA Tour Of Australasia Qualifier Held On Indoor Simulator"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s lots of talk in golf about qualifying for tournaments, via sponsors invites and the like, but how about making your way into a pro event via a simulator?<\/p>\n

Well, that’s exactly the route taken by Gavin Macpherson – a Scotsman now living in Australia – to play his way into the New South Wales Open on the PGA Tour of Australasia.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old won the first ever NSW Virtual Open in October – an event that took place on a network of indoor golf simulators – to claim a spot in the New South Wales Open field.<\/p>\n

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And so, the former semi-professional footballer in Scotland scooped a first prize of $6,500 and a place in the field for the NSW Open, with a prize fund of $800,000.<\/p>\n

“I play a fair bit of indoor golf,” Macpherson told the Sydney Morning Herald. <\/a>“I’m a bit of a gear head, so I like to look at all numbers and data and stuff like that.<\/p>\n

“Then I saw Golf NSW had come up with this pathway, and so I entered the qualifying and got into the final, and then it all paid off, thankfully.”<\/p>\n

Glasgow-born Macpherson moved to Australia a decade ago and turned professional after getting a job at Royal Sydney Golf Club.<\/p>\n

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Now he’s playing alongside the likes of defending champion Lucas Herbert in the New South Wales Open – all thanks to simulator golf.<\/p>\n

It’s not quite the TGL, but another sign of the diversifying of the game, with Golf NSW using the absility to link up virtual golfers from across Australia to find a qualifier instead of the more costly and time consuming traditional qualifying events.<\/p>\n

We’ll wait to see if other tours start to use technology or simulators as a means of offering ways into events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s lots of talk in golf about qualifying for tournaments, via sponsors invites and the like, but how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-281885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}