Golf Central

When a good guy like Ernie Els stumbles in such stupefying fashion, as happened at the Dunhill Championship in South Africa, and gives it up to a good guy like John Bickerton, you sort of shrug your shoulders and say "that's golf, poor guy."

But when Rory Sabbatini goes into the final round with a lead, staggers to a 74, and ends up tied for 10th, eight shots back of good-guy Peter Lonard ... then claims he had to "force the aggression", you sort of say ... "cool!" ...

That's exactly what happened when the 30-year-old Australian Lonard got off to a four-birdie start in five holes Sunday to capture the Australian PGA Championship on the Hyatt Regency course at Coolum on the Australasian Tour.

Lonard fired a final-round 65 to finish three shots ahead of Kiwi David Smail to take his third Australian PGA title.

Silly Season:  You would have thought they couldn't actually have a Silly Season without Woody Austin, but believe it or not, Austin's appearance in Greg Norman's Merrill Lynch Shootout in Naples, Florida this weekend was his first on what the PGA brass like to call the "challenge" season.

No, it's Silly. But, Austin, invited on the strength of his new-found popularity and Aquaman status post-Presidents Cup, teamed with Mark Calcavecchia to win the multi-format Shootout by draining a 35-footer for birdie on the last hole.

Austin and Calcavecchia beat Norman and Bubba Watson by a stroke in the team event. In the final round, the 12 teams played a scramble format, and Austin and Calcavecchia came in on 29-under 187. The teams played a modified alternate shot on Friday and a best ball on Saturday. The event is the last Silly Season tournament before this week's Tiger Woods-hosted Target World Challenge in California, before the PGA Tour begins again in earnest in January in Hawaii.

The narrow defeat means that Norman remains winless in official and unofficial events since the 2001 Skins Game. Austin and Calcavecchia (who won the Shark Shootout in 1995 with Steve Elkington) split $700,000 of the $2.8 million purse.

Lexus Cup: Team Asia stormed to an unstoppable lead behind the early match wins of South Korea's Jee Young Lee, Seon Hwa Lee and In-Kyung Kim, in Perth, Australia, and the Asians went on to a 15-9 victory over a weakened International Team.

The Asians took a 7-point lead into Sunday's singles matches, which were reduced from 12 to 11 when Norwegian star Suzann Pettersen had to withdraw Saturday due to back troubles.

"Everybody knows now that the strength of women's golf in Asia is growing," said Asia captain Se Ri Pak, overstating the obvious. Pak and International captain Annika Sorenstam also sat out their singles match, with Sorenstam suffering from a shoulder problem.

So, what else did we learn from these seemingly irrelevant international matches? 1) Asian golfers are quickly cementing their dominance in women's golf, so maybe the Lexus Cup is actually more relevant than the Solheim Cup; 2) Our very own Natalie Gulbis halved her match against Ji Yai Shin, which is the result we were really looking at; and 3) according to tireless LPGA watcher Mulligan Stu at the Waggle Room blog, the Asian girls have a long way to go to catching up to their American counterparts in the face-painting stakes.

European Challenge Tour:  It was yet another upset at Buenos Aires Golf Club in Argentina, as Marco Ruiz of Paraguay snatched the title from heavy-hitting favourite Angel Cabrera, the hometown boy and US Open champion, at the 102nd Abierto Visa del la Republica presentado por Peugeot.

Ruiz, 33, shot a final round 69 to overtake Cabrera - who closed as poorly as Els had done in South Africa. Cabrera had a triple-bogey 7 on the 17th hole and bogeyed the last. Ruiz, who ended up two shots clear of Argentina's Daniel Vancsik, won the €22,692 (£16,205) first prize, vaulting him to the top spot in the 2008 Challenge Tour Rankings.

Asian Tour: Even Filipinos with nerves like steel, like Juvic Pagunsan, the overnight leader, find it hard to cope with a partisan crowd. And sure enough, Pagunsan fell apart on the back nine, letting a four-shot lead drift away as Thailand's Prayad Marksaeng captured the Volvo Masters of Asia in Bangkok.

In other Asian Tour news, Liang Wenchong became the first Chinese player to win the Asian Tour Order of Merit. At 29, Liang is China's top golfer and with Zhang Lianwei are the only two Chinese to have played in a major. Liang's win in the Singapore Masters in March gave him two-year status on the European Tour, but it remains to be seen whether he will play in Europe full-time. For more on the boom of golf in Asia's biggest country, see our Duffer's Guide to Golf In China, which appeared here two weeks ago.

Ladies European Tour:  In Bangalore, India, Gwladys Nocera of France shot a 1-under 71 Saturday to win the EMAAR-MGF Ladies Masters by one stroke over her countrywoman Virginie Lagoutte-Clement, who shot a 69.