The South Australian PGA Championship was a professional

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

tournament played in

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. It was first held in 1927.

History

The first South Australian Professional Championship was held in 1927 and was a 72-hole stroke-play event. It was won by

Rufus Stewart William Rufus Clyde Stewart (27 September 1893 – 23 April 1964) was an Australian professional golfer. He won the 1927 Australian Open and the 1929 Australian Professional Championship. In 1928 he travelled to Britain and America, playing in ...

, four ahead of

Fergus McMahon Fergus William McMahon (1898 – 28 August 1941) was an Australian professional golfer. He won the 1935 Australian Open at Royal Adelaide, having been the runner-up there in 1932. He also won the 1932 Australian Professional Championship at Roya ...

. Stewart had recently won the

Australian Open The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. Th ...

. McMahon won in 1928, 1929 and 1930, and as a three-time winner he permanently kept the trophy that had been presented in 1927. With only a small number of professional in the state, there were only four different winners in the first 15 championships. Stewart won 6 times and McMahon 5 times, while Alf Toogood won twice, before he moved to Tasmania, and Willie Harvey also won twice, in 1938 and 1940. The format changed to match-play in 1937, all matches being over 36 holes. In 1937 and 1938 there were just 8 entries and a straight knock-out format was used. However, there were 9 entries in 1939 and a 36-hole qualifying stage was used to reduce the field to 8. In 1940 the qualifying stage was retained but just four players advanced to the match-play stage. The 1941 event was reduced to a single day, with 36 holes of stroke-play. The championship resumed in 1946, using the 1940 format with four players qualifying, and this format was retained for a number of years. From 1946 to 1950 only 16 players qualified for the

Australian PGA Championship The Australian PGA Championship is a golf tournament on the PGA Tour of Australasia. It is the home tournament of the Australian PGA. Since 2000 it has been held in the South East Queensland region. The tournament was part of the OneAsia Tour fro ...

. Each state was allocated a specific number of places and organised their own qualifying event for those places. South Australia was allocated just one place. In 1946 there was a 36-hole qualifying event but from 1947 to 1950 the winner of the South Australian Professional Championship qualified. In 1952 there was a dispute between the two finalists, Brian Crafter and

Fred Thompson Freddie Dalton Thompson (August 19, 1942 – November 1, 2015) was an American politician, attorney, lobbyist, columnist, actor, and radio personality. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a United States Senator from Tennessee f ...

. Crafter won the match at the 38th hole but at the 35th hole he had lifted and dropped his ball away from a staked tree. Thompson objected and the matter was not fully resolved until just before the 1953 event, confirming Crafter as the winner.

Winners

References

{{reflist Former PGA Tour of Australasia events Golf tournaments in Australia Golf in South Australia Recurring sporting events established in 1927 Recurring sporting events disestablished in 2008 1927 establishments in Australia 2008 disestablishments in Australia