Just when I thought we were finished with Tour Rundown for 2025, along came weekend one of December, bringing a slew of interesting events. Official events on the DP World Tour, like the Australian Open and the Nedbank Challenge, blended with the LPGA final qualifying school, the PGA Tour’s semi-exhibition Hero Open, and the senior World Champions Cup. Can’t ignore a five-pack of serious golf, so let’s reboot Tour Rundown for one special weekend.

DP World Tour @ Australian Open: A Norseman cometh, part one

Keeping with the distance theme, 10,000 miles separate Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, from Melbourne, the site of this week’s Australian Open. For Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, it wasn’t just the air miles that brought him here. The Australian (Op-Ed) deserves to be a major championship, as it holds a series of wondrous courses at its beck and call. It needs to be more visited by the world’s greatest, and the 2025 field suggests that this is the course.

Rory McIlroy, Adam Scott, Min Woo Lee, Ryan Fox, and a coterie of LIV golfers were on hand for the playing at majestic Royal Melbourne. Long touted as one of the world’s top three golf courses, the composite course blends holes from the East and the West, to enchant, intrigue, and frustrate the finest golfers on the planet. Carlos Ortiz, Elvis Smylie, and Ryan Fox shared the opening-day lead at 65, and while each found a top-fifteen placement at week’s end, none figured in the true outcome. A man from the North Country, Rasmus Neergaarrd-Petersen of Denmark, followed an opening 67 with 66, to take a one-shot advantage over former Open Championship winner Cameron Smith and Aussie great Adam Scott.

Round three saw RNP and Smith match 66s, while Si Woo Kim posted 65, to move two shots away. Scott hung around with 68, three back with 18 to play. Both Kim and Scott needed a mid-60s round on Sunday to contend, but neither summoned the numbers. Kim placed third, two shots from the top, while Scott finished on fifth place, four strokes in arrears. South Africa’s Michael Hollick found that wondrous 65, and jumped eleven golfers, into solo fourth.

It was left to RNP and Smith to decide the champion. After trading birdies and bogeys for 17 holes, the pair came to the 72nd hole all square. The odds favored the major champion, but the challenge was not to be denied. Despite an errant approach and a safe pitch at the last, RNP made the purest stroke at the most critical time, draining a 30-feet putt for par at the last. Smith’s approach settled on the green surface, some sixty feet from the hole. His approach was to five feet, but his par putt stayed left. In the blink of an eye, Australian hearts were broken, as the Norseman came and conquered.

LPGA @ Final Qualifying: Two rounds left

LPGA final qualifying is a grueling, five-round affair. From the LPGA website:

The conclusion of Saturday afternoon marked the halfway point for athletes as they now prepare to play the final two rounds before the cut to the top 65 and ties is made on Monday. The remaining athletes will compete in the fifth and final round on Tuesday, Dec. 9, and those who finish in the top 25 and ties will secure their LPGA Tour playing credentials for the 2026 season.

This year, the competition was made more challenging by incompassionate weather along the Alabama coast. Thursday was a complete washout, forcing play into Tuesday next. Friday and Saturday weren’t as wet, but temperatures have yet to reach the 60 degree mark. You must love championship golf, to play in the worst Open Championship weather, about 4000 miles from the birthplace of golf. The women hopefuls of the 2026 LPGA circuit would play in just about any weather, to secure privileges for the upcoming season.

Unfortunately for the competitors, Nature had other ideas on Sunday, and the tournament lost another portion of a day to competition. The leaders were able to complete four holes, so there will be much work to do over the next three days. With overnight rains in the forecast for Sunday to Monday, the courses at best will be soft. Temperatures will reach the mid-50s, so opportunity to continue play on Monday does exist. Keep your fingers crossed for all of the aspiring LPGA members in Alabama.

DP World Tour @ Nedbank Challenge: A Norseman cometh, part two

Sun City, South Africa, is a mere 6500 miles from Norway, the country that Kristoffer Reitan calls home. Compared with RNP’s jouney to Australia, it’s a wee sojourn. Reitan was a man on a serious mission, through 53 holes of the Nedbank. He sat at 19-under par, seven strokes clear of his closest challenge. In a flash of time, and the tug of an iron, everything changed. Reitan’s approach to the final Saturday green finished in a dense thicket, and he returned to the original spot with a two-shot penalty. His second approach found the green, and he took two putts for a six. In that fifteen minutes of infamy, two advantage shots were lopped off, the immortal turned mortal, and Sunday would matter, after all.

Sunday came, and Reitan played the front nine like a man possessed. That was barely a good thing. Bogeys at one, three, and seven, were countered by birdies at two, five, eight and nine. His one-under effort cost another shot of the lead, as home lad Jayden Schafer played the front in minus-two, clipping the advantage to four. Birdies from Schafer at ten and twelve narrowed the lead to a couple, and when Reitan got careless at fifteen, the lead was down to one shot. After an up-and-down for par at 16, Schafer faced birdies putts of 28 and 17 feet at the closing holes, but could not convert either one. He finished on minus-sixteen.

Reitan seemed a boat adrift on choppy waters at this stage, but he found a way to reach the putting surface in regulation on each of the final three holes. His birdie putts from 25, 50, and 15 feet stayed out of the hole, but snuggled up close enough for par at each green. Despite making a drama out of a walk in the park, Reitan had found victory, far from home.

PGA Tour @ Hero Open: It’s a Matsuyama kind of week

Four rounds of 64 were posted all week on New Providence. Two of them came in the last hour of regulation. Hideki Matsuyama started on a heater, playing the stretch from hole 3 to hole 10 in minus-seven. He capped the stretch with a hole-out for eagle at ten. Alex Noren didn’t have quite the same run as his Japanese opponent, although he did close with three birdies over his final four holes, to force a playoff.

As Matsuyama closed with five consecutive pars, one might have given the advantage to the blue-hot Noren. It would have made three winning norsemen this weekend, but it was not to be. Matsuyama holed for birdie on the first playoff hole, the exact same hole that Noren had birdied, less than thirty minutes prior.

A single stroke out of the playoff was third-round leader Sepp Straka. The Austrian-turned-southerner had a rough start to his round, but closed strong to nearly chase down the lead pair. One more behind Straka were US Open champion JJ Spaun and Open champion Scottie Scheffler.

Seniors @ World Champions Cup: The more things change…

The most positive element of the World Champions Cup is this: it brings three senior squads together (International, European, USA) under one umbrella. As long as the divided Ryder and Presidents cups exist, the regular tours will not be able to make the same claim. This week in Florida, one team was clearly better than the rest.

I’ll not sort out the method to all this madness for a few weeks now, but I like the format. With a few tweeks, it could work on the regular tours, as well. Instead of nine-hole matches, the regular sides would play 18. At the Feather Sound country club in Clearwater, Florida, Team Europe showed off its skill advantage. The men from the continent and isles won four out of five sessions, from Thursday through Sunday. They outclassed the other two sides in all but the Friday sixsomes. For those unaware, sixsomes is alternate-shot among two teammates, amended to six golfers in the group.

Europe won both singles sessions on Sunday, along with a Thursday sixsomes and a Friday morning session. The event was not without its bumps, however. Thursdays morning six ball was cancelled, and no play was scheduled for Saturday. Not sure that the senior set needed a day off; they routinely play 72 holes at their major events. In the end, the final tally was Europe 230, International 213.5, and USA 204.5.

Eagle hole-out ?@BernhardLanger6 brings the heat for Team Europe on No. 5 @WorldChampsCup. pic.twitter.com/jAj25S0r0X

— PGA TOUR Champions (@ChampionsTour) December 7, 2025