An Australian prodigy likened to Cam Smith and inspired by Ben Hogan will make his debut on the PGA Tour in an event beginning on Friday morning AEST at the Silverado Resort in California.
Just over eight years after winning the club championship at the Bexley Golf Club in Sydney as a 12-year-old, former amateur star Jeffrey Guan will tee off in the A$9 million tournament in the Napa Valley featuring top-line talent including compatriot Min Woo Lee.
The New South Welshmen displayed significant promise as a teenager and joined Adam Scott, Ryan Ruffles and Kiwi Grant Waite as the only player to successfully defend the Australian Boys’ Amateur title when successful by four shots in 2022.
That followed a triumph at the Adam Scott Junior Championship in the United States, where he played several junior events in his late teens, when an eight shot winner over a field of good depth. He later finished fifth in the US Junior Amateur event.
A representative of the International team in the Junior Presidents Cup in 2022, he recorded three top 10 finishes on the Challenger PGA Tour later that year as an amateur and was added to the Golf Australia Rookie Squad in February this year.
In an interview in 2022 Guan, who is rated a considered thinker on the golf course keen to eliminate risk where possible, told Golf Australia he was inspired by American legend Ben Hogan, a nine-time major winner who died seven years before the Aussie was born.
In the same feature, the director of teaching at The Australian Golf Club Tony Barter described Guan as a “one in ten year” type of talent.
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“That’s absolutely not to say he’ll go on to be that as a touring professional. But as a young bloke, he has that Adam Scott, Aaron Baddeley, Matt Jones ability that catches your eye,” Barter said.
“In terms of Jeffrey as a player, he’s a little like Cameron Smith in that he doesn’t have a standout feature in his game, but equally he just doesn’t have a weakness.
“The player that he actually reminds me of, not in terms of swing or striking specifically, is actually Craig Parry. I used to play with `Paz’ as a junior and at all these tournaments we used to play, the vibe was he wasn’t much to look at — until you saw his scorecard. And we all know what Parry went on to do.
“Sometimes people forget what tournament golf is all about — it’s that scorecard, nothing else. You don’t have to swing it like Adam Scott, but you have to get it in the hole like him. And I think that’s what Jeffrey does extremely well for someone his age and stage.”
Guan has signed with management company Sportfive, which counts Jon Rahm and Phil Mickelson among those on its books, and has received a sponsors invitation to step out in the Napa Valley in a field also featuring Max Homa, Wyndham Clark and Sahith Theegala.