{"id":29562,"date":"2025-11-30T12:04:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T12:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=29562"},"modified":"2025-11-30T12:04:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T12:04:20","slug":"spains-puig-wins-australian-pga-for-first-dp-world-tour-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=29562","title":{"rendered":"Spain’s Puig wins Australian PGA for first DP World Tour title"},"content":{"rendered":"
Nerveless young Spaniard David Puig on Sunday became the first European to win the Australian PGA Championship since 1998, holding off a chasing pack led by China’s Ding Wenyi to claim a maiden DP World Tour title.<\/p>\n

LIV Golf’s Puig went into the final day at Royal Queensland Golf Club in Brisbane as joint leader, but asserted himself early and proved unflappable at the European-based circuit’s 2026 season-opening event.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old nailed five birdies in an unblemished 66 to finish at 18-under par and become the first Spaniard to win the Australian PGA since the great Severiano Ballesteros in 1981.<\/p>\n

The impressive 21-year-old Ding also had a 66 to finish at 16-under and another LIV player, Australian Marc Leishman (67), tied for third a shot further back with New Zealander Nick Voke (66).<\/p>\n

The 2023 champion Min Woo Lee and New Zealand’s Daniel Hillier were tied fifth on 14-under par, one ahead of Australian veteran Adam Scott.<\/p>\n

“It feels amazing,” said Puig, a good friend of tennis world number one and fellow Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz.<\/p>\n

“I’ve really had a lot of close calls in a few events throughout this year and last year and I wasn’t able to pull it through.<\/p>\n

“So it feels unbelievable, especially winning here in Australia. So I’m really, really excited and happy.”<\/p>\n

The last European to win the Kirkwood Cup was England’s David Howell.<\/p>\n

Puig is a player on the rise, finishing 10th on the 2025 LIV Golf rankings, having cut short his college career at Arizona State University to join the breakaway tour in 2022.<\/p>\n

The victory was his third as a professional after two on the Asian Tour, most recently at the 2024 Malaysian Open.<\/p>\n

His previous best on the DP World Tour was third at the Ras Al Khaimah Championship in January.<\/p>\n

“I was pretty nervous to be fair,” he said. “Especially thinking about the past a little bit, you know, what I could have done a little better. But I kept my composure really well.”<\/p>\n

Puig made a sensational start with birdies at two, three and four to move three clear of Leishman, Lee and fellow overnight leader Ricardo Gouveia of Portugal.<\/p>\n

Birdies on the ninth by Leishman and playing partner Ding narrowed the gap to two.<\/p>\n

But Puig responded by sinking a monster putt for his fourth birdie of the day at the par-three eighth to reclaim a three-shot buffer.<\/p>\n

He made the turn with the same advantage and despite it slipping to two as Leishman, Lee and Ding made moves, he was resolute and kept his focus.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nerveless young Spaniard David Puig on Sunday became the first European to win the Australian PGA Championship since 1998, holding off a chasing pack led by China’s Ding Wenyi to claim a maiden DP World Tour title. LIV Golf’s Puig went into the final day at Royal Queensland Golf Club in Brisbane as joint leader, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}