The Bubble
We enter the pointy end of the season next week and the Webex Players Series event in Sydney. With only five events remaining in the 2024/25 season, all three DPWT cards are still up for grabs and it may come down to the final event of the season which we haven’t had since the change to a points system in 2022. Whilst that is what the tour is mostly interested in promoting, I want to highlight something that isn’t really covered on the Australasian Tour. The bubble.
On the Australasian Tour, the top 50 on the Order of Merit at season’s end receive full status for next season, essentially guaranteeing them all events on the calendar and job security for the next year. The next important positions are 51-70. These players will receive conditional status and are positioned below Q-School graduates, which means they won’t have a start in either the Australian PGA and Australian Open (unless they can finish top 3 in the Mini-OOM), and are at the mercy of the mid-season re-rank where they could slide further and miss out on the majority of events in the second half of the season. These players may choose to go to Q-School to move up a category and give themselves a chance to play our two majors. Players below 70th won’t have any status, and will be forced to go through Q-School to win back playing rights for the following season. Those that finish 51-100 will have an exemption straight into the Final Stage of Q-School.
So. It’s fairly important a player finishes in the top 50.
Those that follow me on Twitter will have seen me debut a tool this week that tracks PGATA entry lists. I’ve been using it to see who withdraws from events, but the actual point of it was to build Order of Merit projections as we run towards the season’s end.
Without going too deep into how the projections work (get in touch if you want to know more), each player is allocated an “Expected Points” sum for each event they are scheduled to play based on the released entry lists. The better a player has performed in regular PGATA events, the higher their Expected Points will be.
I will be updating these projections and posting what has changed at the conclusion of each event. I hope it provides some interest to all as we close out the season.
PROJECTIONS
At the time of writing, there is no entry list for The National Tournament which is the final event of the season. I have duplicated The Heritage field for projections purposes and will provide an update when the entry list is released.
Players that are not expected to play four events total over the season have been removed.
| Projected Rank | Player | Current OOM Points | Events Played | Total Expected Events | Projected OOM Points |
| 1 | Elvis Smylie | 1247.56 | 7 | 8 | 1291.34 |
| 2 | Jack Buchanan | 626.21 | 11 | 16 | 769.73 |
| 3 | Lucas Herbert | 717.06 | 3 | 4 | 760.84 |
| 4 | Cameron Smith | 735.68 | 4 | 4 | 735.68 |
| 5 | Curtis Luck | 523.44 | 4 | 5 | 567.22 |
| 6 | Anthony Quayle | 486.59 | 10 | 15 | 563.21 |
| 7 | Corey Lamb | 463.24 | 11 | 16 | 539.86 |
| 8 | Jordan Doull | 381.73 | 13 | 18 | 525.25 |
| 9 | Phoenix Campbell | 319.63 | 10 | 15 | 463.15 |
| 10 | Jak Carter | 369.41 | 10 | 13 | 463.06 |
| 11 | Blake Proverbs | 324.7 | 13 | 18 | 415.36 |
| 12 | Cory Crawford | 348.96 | 12 | 15 | 398.96 |
| 13 | Harrison Crowe | 326.86 | 5 | 8 | 376.86 |
| 14 | Jasper Stubbs | 331.73 | 9 | 12 | 365.09 |
| 15 | Josh Geary | 327.68 | 4 | 6 | 352.16 |
| 16 | Ben Henkel | 231.18 | 11 | 16 | 321.84 |
| 17 | Kerry Mountcastle | 214.99 | 11 | 15 | 278.30 |
| 18 | William Bruyeres | 205.46 | 11 | 16 | 263.65 |
| 19 | Jake McLeod | 170.74 | 13 | 18 | 261.40 |
| 20 | Alexander Simpson | 239.78 | 6 | 7 | 248.66 |
| 21 | Matias Sanchez | 189.5 | 9 | 14 | 246.57 |
| 22 | Ben Eccles | 179.46 | 11 | 15 | 242.77 |
| 23 | Ryan Peake | 189.86 | 14 | 19 | 240.98 |
| 24 | Andrew Campbell | 172.84 | 11 | 15 | 236.15 |
| 25 | Connor McKinney | 156.52 | 8 | 13 | 231.37 |
| 26 | Cameron John | 156.31 | 10 | 15 | 231.16 |
| 27 | David Micheluzzi | 184.7 | 3 | 4 | 228.48 |
| 28 | Jye Pickin | 159.36 | 12 | 17 | 217.55 |
| 29 | James Marchesani | 140.35 | 13 | 18 | 215.20 |
| 30 | Brett Rankin | 181.6 | 9 | 11 | 209.46 |
| 31 | James Conran | 144.74 | 10 | 15 | 202.93 |
| 32 | Nick Voke | 106.63 | 2 | 5 | 200.28 |
| 33 | Andrew Martin | 108.84 | 6 | 11 | 199.50 |
| 34 | Nathan Barbieri | 138.04 | 14 | 19 | 189.16 |
| 35 | Jason Norris | 172.42 | 8 | 9 | 185.73 |
| 36 | Adam Brady | 148.96 | 13 | 17 | 178.90 |
| 37 | Gavin Fairfax | 130.31 | 9 | 13 | 170.75 |
| 38 | Quinnton Croker | 134.04 | 8 | 11 | 169.88 |
| 39 | Tim Hart | 118.18 | 13 | 18 | 169.30 |
| 40 | Braden Becker | 105.88 | 13 | 18 | 164.07 |
| 41 | Will Florimo | 121.52 | 9 | 13 | 161.96 |
| 42 | Darcy Brereton | 109.56 | 13 | 18 | 160.68 |
| 43 | Jack Munro | 135.39 | 13 | 17 | 160.35 |
| 44 | Dylan Gardner | 122.24 | 9 | 13 | 157.77 |
| 45 | Dillon Hart | 122.06 | 10 | 14 | 152.00 |
| 46 | Austin Bautista | 73.43 | 10 | 15 | 150.05 |
| 47 | Michael Hendry | 85.8 | 3 | 7 | 149.11 |
| 48 | Josh Armstrong | 91.37 | 12 | 17 | 142.49 |
| 49 | Andrew Evans | 114.52 | 9 | 12 | 141.17 |
| 50 | Tyler Hodge | 102.57 | 10 | 14 | 138.16 |
| 51 | Haydn Barron | 137.13 | 6 | 6 | 137.13 |
| 52 | Adam Bland | 74.12 | 8 | 12 | 135.97 |
| 53 | Joshua Greer | 58.14 | 9 | 14 | 132.99 |
| 54 | Brady Watt | 95.3 | 9 | 13 | 125.24 |
| 55 | Blake Windred | 88.16 | 11 | 15 | 123.69 |
| 56 | Lachlan Barker | 65.48 | 10 | 15 | 123.67 |
| 57 | Connor McDade | 105.12 | 11 | 12 | 120.71 |
| 58 | Brett Rumford | 97.74 | 5 | 6 | 120.57 |
| 59 | James Gibellini | 69.05 | 12 | 17 | 120.17 |
| 60 | Tyler Wood | 88.66 | 11 | 15 | 118.60 |
| 61 | Andrew Kelly | 60.07 | 10 | 15 | 118.26 |
| 62 | Matthew Millar | 110.93 | 7 | 8 | 117.17 |
| 63 | Lawry Flynn | 69.81 | 8 | 11 | 107.05 |
| 64 | Ryan Ang | 103.23 | 9 | 9 | 103.23 |
| 65 | Aaron Pike | 77.03 | 10 | 14 | 101.99 |
| 66 | Kyle Michel | 49.99 | 8 | 13 | 101.11 |
| 67 | Jordan Zunic | 41.88 | 5 | 10 | 100.07 |
| 68 | Tom Power Horan | 48.6 | 8 | 13 | 99.72 |
| 69 | Christopher Wood | 69.7 | 13 | 17 | 99.64 |
| 70 | Deyen Lawson | 21.41 | 6 | 11 | 98.03 |
| 71 | Lucas Higgins | 72.69 | 12 | 16 | 97.65 |
| 72 | Jarryd Felton | 61.75 | 11 | 15 | 97.28 |
| 73 | Chris Crabtree | 41.77 | 12 | 17 | 92.89 |
| 74 | Daniel Gale | 46.12 | 5 | 6 | 89.90 |
| 75 | Denzel Ieremia | 70.36 | 8 | 10 | 88.12 |
| 76 | Sam Brazel | 12.94 | 5 | 10 | 87.79 |
| 77 | Kade McBride | 29.34 | 10 | 15 | 87.53 |
| 78 | Douglas Klein | 60.58 | 3 | 7 | 85.54 |
| 79 | Dimitrios Papadatos | 48.23 | 9 | 14 | 84.15 |
| 80 | Todd Sinnott | 46.14 | 5 | 8 | 84.11 |
| 81 | Josh Younger | 40.21 | 9 | 14 | 83.29 |
| 82 | James Hydes | 54.54 | 10 | 14 | 79.50 |
| 83 | Jack Pountney | 40.88 | 10 | 14 | 76.41 |
| 84 | Jason Scrivener | 75.3 | 4 | 4 | 75.30 |
| 85 | Simon Hawkes | 24.63 | 6 | 9 | 74.63 |
| 86 | Zachary Maxwell | 47.84 | 9 | 13 | 72.80 |
| 87 | Christopher Fan | 47.74 | 10 | 14 | 72.70 |
| 88 | Samuel Slater | 68.94 | 4 | 4 | 68.94 |
| 89 | Harry Hillier | 68.87 | 5 | 5 | 68.87 |
| 90 | Peter Cooke | 58.34 | 7 | 8 | 65.82 |
| 91 | Edward Donoghue | 44.96 | 9 | 12 | 63.68 |
| 92 | Aaron Townsend | 33.55 | 8 | 12 | 63.49 |
| 93 | Louis Dobbelaar | 26.85 | 13 | 18 | 62.77 |
| 94 | James Mee | 38.25 | 10 | 13 | 56.97 |
| 95 | Anthony Choat | 34.99 | 8 | 11 | 53.71 |
| 96 | Lincoln Tighe | 40.78 | 11 | 15 | 51.70 |
| 97 | Jake Meenhorst | 31.35 | 9 | 12 | 50.07 |
| 98 | Charlie Robbins | 34.37 | 8 | 9 | 47.51 |
| 99 | Matthew Griffin | 22.58 | 6 | 7 | 45.95 |
| 100 | Ben Wharton | 18.74 | 11 | 14 | 42.18 |
Players like Austin Bautista and Michael Hendry are expected to move into the Top 50 as they are entered for five and four events respectively. Other players that are not entered or have minimal events, such as Haydn Barron and Matthew Millar are expected to move down the Order of Merit.
Connor McDade moved from a projected 64th up to 57th just by qualifying for the NZ Open field after Jye Pickin made it on his exemption category.
We have six weeks to go before we conclude another season. I will continue to provide updates on projections as we charge towards the finish line. Good luck to all those chasing a job next season!