Cam Davis is coming in hot after a stellar season on the PGA Tour, and he’s determined to add the Joe Kirkwood Cup to a trophy cabinet already boasting his national open.
Cameron Davis has experienced two big bumps in his professional golf career. The first was his first victory as a pro – the 2017 Australian Open at The Australian Golf Club. That taught him how to win. The second was after his debut on the International team at the 2022 Presidents Cup where he played alongside some of his heroes, like countryman Adam Scott. That taught him to believe he was indeed one the world’s best players.
Now, he’s hoping for a third bump. The world No.44 is hungry to add the Australian PGA Championship’s Joe Kirkwood Cup to his cabinet and see what uniting Australia’s two biggest trophies does for his confidence on the world stage. He’ll get that chance at the Fortinet Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland from November 23-26.
“These are the tournaments that I grew up watching on TV,” Davis tells Australian Golf Digest. “I think every Australian golfer looks up to those tournaments and feels they are the two Australian trophies we want to get more. For as long as I don’t have an Australian PGA title I’m going to keep grinding to try because at the end of my career, I want to look back and say I achieved a win in the two biggest tournaments I could play in Australia. That would mean a lot to me.”
Davis tied for seventh at last year’s Australian PGA at Royal Queensland, where Cameron Smith capped off his sensational 2022 season, which yielded a Players Championship and a maiden major at The Open at St Andrews, with his third Joe Kirkwood Cup. The 28-year-old Davis is keen for another go at Royal Queensland, which he feels can produce a thrilling finish.
“I think it’s a good test; it’s a golf course that obviously seems to separate the good players from the really good players,” he says. “You always get a really good winner.”
Davis will land in Brisbane from his adopted home in Seattle, Washington, in the beautiful Pacific North-West of the US. It’s where he and wife Jonika have called home for several years.
“It’ll be really nice to start my little stretch in Australia up there,” he says. “It’s going to be warm; it’s going to be a little bit of a change from Seattle. I think it’s great that we’ve got a few major cities around Australia that share big tournaments and having the PGA up in Queensland, they love golf up there and it’s always a really good crowd.”
PGA of Australia chief executive Gavin Kirkman says it is important to have another top 50 player in the world like Davis in the field. “Cam is a rising star in world golf and undoubtedly will be a player to watch in our two Aussie ‘majors’,” Kirkman says. “In recent weeks, he’s climbed back inside the top 50 on the Official World Golf Ranking and reached a career-high, so he’ll be bringing some good form back home for the Australian PGA and Australian Open.”
Davis cemented his reputation this year as one of the PGA Tour’s rising stars. He earned seven top-10 results on the PGA Tour, among them a T-6 at the elite Players Championship, where he was in the thick of Sunday contention at TPC Sawgrass, and a T-4 at the PGA Championship in New York. That was his first top-five finish at a major. The Sydneysider says collecting top-10s at events that boast the best players in the world provides momentum going into his domestic summer.
“We’re going to have quite a few [DP World Tour and PGA Tour] players in the field and when they play their best golf, they’re pretty difficult to beat,” Davis says modestly. “I wouldn’t say if I bring the golf that I’ve played out on the PGA Tour in the US to Australia, it’s definitely [going to be good enough] to win. But I feel if I play the golf I have been playing, and have a week where things go my way, then that level of golf is good enough to have a chance. I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit wiser, a little bit smarter in the way that I play the game and hopefully that leads to better results at home. I’m looking forward to seeing where we’re at right now and how that goes in Australia.”
At least some of the credit for his 2023 campaign on the PGA Tour belongs to last year’s Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow in Charlotte, North Carolina. There, Davis secured two points for Trevor Immelman’s International team – a foursomes victory with South Korea’s Si Woo Kim over world No.1 Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns and a fourball match with Scott against Burns and Billy Horschel.
“The Presidents Cup was a really cool experience to me because that was the first time playing alongside a lot of guys I looked up to,” Davis says. “They had my back, and it was so nice playing a round of golf with Adam Scott and he’s on your team and he wants all your putts to drop. Playing on the same team as Scotty, Si Woo Kim, all these guys you’ve looked up to, who have won massive tournaments, all wanting you to do well, and then playing well yourself in that environment, it’s a huge boost. They feel like my friends now even though I’m competing against them on tour. It’s another level of comfort on a tour where it seems like everyone’s out to get you. I feel more at home than I ever have in America and on the PGA Tour [because of the Presidents Cup]. I hit some great shots under pressure and made some really important putts at Quail Hollow that I added to the memory bank. I’ve had some situations this year where I’ve had some important putts and I felt like I was able to draw from the Presidents Cup.”
Davis capped off his sensational year with a third-place result at the Fortinet Championship in Napa, California, before his last two starts at the Shriners event in Las Vegas and the Zozo Championship in Japan. Now, he’s desperate to get home for the Aussie summer. Davis will also head to his native Sydney for a shot at another Australian Open victory. The Open will be held at The Australian and The Lakes golf clubs from November 30 to December 3. Both the Australian PGA and Open will be co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour and form the beginning of the 2024 Race to Dubai schedule.
In 2017, at The Australian Golf Club, Davis fired a final-round 64 to hold off an Australian Open field that included PGA Tour winners such as Smith, Matt Jones, Jonas Blixt, Jordan Spieth and Jason Day to capture his first professional victory. That win gave him starts on the secondary Korn Ferry Tour in the US. There, he won the Nashville Open to catapult himself onto the PGA Tour for the 2019 season. Davis also captured the 2015 Australian Amateur Championship at The Australian. It’s safe to say he’s thrilled to head back to the club in Sydney’s east.
“The 2017 Aussie Open helped my confidence massively going forward,” he says. “That was the very beginning of my career and it actually gave me a lot of starts on the [formerly named] Web.com Tour. I took advantage of starts and played really well and it really kicked off my career. I would say that momentum has carried me all the way through until now, in 2023.”
More importantly, he’s just excited to get back to his homeland.
“Spending the whole year away from home [can be tough]. Obviously, I’m living the childhood dream of playing on the PGA Tour, but it’s always so good to come back to Australia and see family,” Davis says. “To play golf courses you grew up on and watched on TV and competing in front of Australian fans is one of the best feelings in the world. Every time I come back is so much fun, but at the same time – as an Australian – you really want to win, and the fields end up being really competitive. I’m super-pumped to make the trip back again. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
[Main image: Getty Images/Jed Jacobsohn]
