Jason Norris fought off demons, tears and a hard-charging David McKenzie to make NSW Senior Open history at Thurgoona Country Club Resort.<\/p>\n
Norris became the first person to complete the NSW Open\u2013Senior Open double, and did so in style with a grandstand, final-hole birdie.<\/p>\n
His closing round of two-under-par 70 would normally be nothing to write home about. But given that he\u2019d begun the third and final day with a four-stroke lead, the score itself does not tell the story.<\/p>\n
Norris was still three ahead when he made a two-putt birdie on the seventh, but began to show signs of nerves when he drove out-of-bounds on the ninth and endured a double-bogey.<\/p>\n
By the time Norris nervously took three shots from the front of the short 12th for another bogey, 2024 champion McKenzie had drawn level as their playing partner Matt Millar (71) fell by the wayside.<\/p>\n
McKenzie then had chances to take the lead outright with birdie putts on 13 and 15, split by an eagle chance on 14, all narrowly missing.<\/p>\n
But Norris, having hit two nervy driving irons in the preceding half-hour, stepped to the tee of the difficult par-3 16th and struck a laser inside a metre to steady the ship and regain the lead.<\/p>\n
McKenzie answered with a quality birdie of his own up the 17th, leaving Norris exactly where he\u2019d been four years earlier \u2013 tied for the lead on the final tee and in an effective matchplay situation.<\/p>\n
On that day, Norris suffered a brutal triple-bogey to hand the crown to Richard Green. So how would he handle the moment at his second opportunity?<\/p>\n
McKenzie heaped the pressure on, drilling a 3-wood down the middle. But Norris kept faith in his driving iron and followed suit, passing his mate by 12 paces.<\/p>\n
McKenzie tugged his approach to the fringe at front left of the green, leaving Norris to nip a tidy, 129-metre approach to about 20 feet and firmly with the upper hand.<\/p>\n
The Victorian lagged down to five feet right of the cup, clearing the stage for the storybook finale.<\/p>\n
And Norris duly delivered. He rammed in his birdie putt \u2013 it was travelling when it fell \u2013 and thrust his clenched fist to the sky as the huge gallery roared its approval.<\/p>\n
The moment was extremely cathartic for Norris, who had tears in his eyes as he revealed thoughts of his seriously ill mother Lynn had inspired his late revival.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hasn\u2019t been easy at home lately, [but] when I was back to [sharing the] lead, I thought, You know, Mum would love for me to do well, and that\u2019s what I used,\u201d said an emotional Norris, who also was glad to bury his 2022 disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s always in the memory, isn\u2019t it? One thing my psychologist said is you\u2019ve got to acknowledge the past to move past it. So I did exactly that. I thought, This is what I want to do, and then did it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hit a pretty good 3-iron and not a bad 9-iron in, but the odds of that putt to go in when you really wanted it to \u2013 and I smashed it, so it was gonna be a good six foot past \u2013 and for it to go in, it\u2019s doubly as good.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s awesome. That\u2019s the stuff you dream of on the last hole to win a tournament is rare. You don\u2019t get many of them, and\u2026 those crowds were awesome \u2013 it felt like I was back at the Aussie Open last year, with Rory [McIlroy] in front of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Remarkably, it was the third successive year that the NSW Senior Open champion had been determined by a final-hole birdie, after Mat Goggin last year and McKenzie in 2024.<\/p>\n
Norris\u2019 birdie capped a rollercoaster round of 70 that vaulted him to 13-under, one clear of McKenzie, whose second successive 67 was full of merit and without much luck on the greens as he followed his win in 2024 and fourth last year with another runner-up finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m a bit of a Thurgoona specialist,\u201d the affable Melburnian said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a task [to catch Norris]. He had to give us a bit of leeway, which he did there for a couple of holes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably struck it as well the past couple of days as I have in a long time, but I just didn\u2019t make a couple of putts when I needed to. But Jase was great \u2013 and what a way to finish!\u201d<\/p>\n
Millar fought off pain from a nagging back injury \u2013 and an uncustomarily cold putter \u2013 to finish third at eight-under, one clear of Murray Lott, who shared the day\u2019s best round with McKenzie.<\/p>\n
Chris Campbell fired a closing 69 to finish three-under as leading amateur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Norris fought off demons, tears and a hard-charging David McKenzie to make NSW Senior Open history at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,516584,755,165964,181507,516585,85,516586],"class_list":["post-949159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-david-mckenzie","tag-golf","tag-golf-nsw","tag-jason-norris","tag-nsw-senior-open","tag-sports","tag-thurgoona-country-club-resort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949159","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=949159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}