View here<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIf they keep picking good venues. I think the sandbelt adds that little bit extra, particularly Melbourne. An Australian Open and Royal Melbourne certainly creates a buzz,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Leishman, 42, relishes the chance to play close to home, which is Warrnambool. Playing the Australian Open, having already played the Australian PGA last week and the WA Open last month, is important to him because it enables him to give back to Australian golf.<\/p>\n
While players have been criticised for defecting to the Saudi-run LIV Golf, Leishman says it has allowed him to do more to promote Australian golf.<\/p>\n
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After the Australian Open, Leishman will head to Cathedral to play in the club\u2019s second invitational event alongside Adam Scott and Lucas Herbert.<\/p>\n
Then he will head to the Mornington Peninsula for the Victorian PGA at Moonah Links.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I\u2019ve got the time to do it, which is nice. Yeah, it\u2019s definitely important to me,\u201d Leishman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlus, it\u2019s good for me too, to be able to come home, selfishly. I really enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Leishman has been playing in the Australian Ripper GC team in LIV for a little over three years.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been able to play with two of his closest mates, Smith and Herbert, without the stress and the week-to-week grind of the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n
Since LIV was established, one of the major criticisms was that players wouldn\u2019t have the same desire to perform in the majors, because of the guaranteed money at LIV.<\/p>\n
But Leishman was the only one of eight Australians to make the cut at the Open Championship in July, in difficult conditions at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m enjoying my golf as much as I ever have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, you want to play well wherever you play. But, when you\u2019re enjoying your golf, the bad shots \u2026 they still bother you, but it\u2019s easier to get over them, if that makes sense, so that it doesn\u2019t impact the next shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m playing a little less, the body is feeling better \u2026 yeah, I\u2019m just loving it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is the fresh enjoyment purely down to the transition to LIV?<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just playing less golf. I think I\u2019ve always said I really enjoyed my time on the PGA Tour and I am loving LIV, especially the teams side of it. But I think just playing less golf.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m very lucky to be a professional golfer and do what I love for a living, but when you do so much of it, like I was, it can get a little tiring. But now I\u2019m enjoying it as much as I ever have.\u201d<\/p>\n
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport are sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, Burgess said it was no longer an issue. \u201cThe spring growth was good \u2026 the coverage is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-323113","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\/323113","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=323113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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