The early season events leading to the two major events of the summer on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia are over, with the young, new pro Jack Buchanan playing the best golf to this point.

The South Australian won twice, in the Kalgoorlie desert in a playoff with Jak Carter and then he came from far back on Sunday morning to triumph at Willunga.

Elvis Smylie finally did what he’s threatened to for three seasons and won on a windy, wet final day in Mandurah in the West Australian Open and a couple of weeks ago at Nudgee, Phoenix Campbell successfully defended the Queensland PGA he’d won an amateur. It is something of a curiosity to those of us old enough to remember when PGA championships were reserved for pros but these days the line is so blurred it barely matters.

Either way, the pair of middle irons he and Jak Carter hit inside a metre at the first playoff hole are clearly the finest shots of the tour to this point.

Then last week at the New South Wales Open at Murray Downs (formerly Swan Hill GC before the members moved across the Murray to take advantage of poker machines and better ground but not fewer flies) Lucas Herbert played brilliantly on a windy final day to slip past his LIV teammate, the 2022 Open champion, Cam Smith.

Both will be amongst the favoured players this week at Royal Queensland in the BMW Australian PGA Championship with Smith, a member of the host club and looking to atone for his awful performance last year where he played some of the poorest golf of his career and comfortably missed the cut.

This is a wildly eclectic field, something guaranteed by co-sanctioning with the DP World Tour, an arrangement adding much to the PGA and next week’s ISPS HANDA Australian Open in Melbourne.

Smith, Herbert and Marc Leishman are adding tournament numbers to their 14-week contract with LIV at a time when the top players think anything approaching 15 events a season is a full load. Most played a deal more when there was less money swashing around the game at the top level.

After a winning season in the United States, Cameron Davis is back home as is Jason Day.

I first saw Day play as a 16-year-old on the old Royal Queensland course in an interstate series when he was clearly already the best player there. It’s hard to believe he hasn’t played Royal Queensland since, but we can all agree it's nice to see him, and his game, at home.

Familiar European names are here including Nico Colsaerts, second behind Tyrrell Hatton at the Dunhill a few weeks ago, Victor Perez the Frenchman, German Yannik Paul and the veteran Spaniard Rafa Cabrera Bello.

The most important prize here (and next week) for so many of the home players is as much the guarantee of a DP World Tour card as it is the trophies and the prizemoney.

Most would forsake the money for a card, something borne out by our results at the tour school in Spain last week. Not one Australian made the top 20 cut-off which relegates the rest (who shot 17-under or higher over six rounds) to a season on the second tour which is essentially a year-long qualifying school.

The other route to the "European" tour which is essentially a world tour considering they play as many tournaments in Australia as they do in England is to be one of the top three non-exempt players on our tour when the season ends at the end of March.

Buchanan, Smylie and Carter all have good shots at it although only the leading one gets a full card for the main tour season.

Getting into maybe a dozen of the smaller events, which is the lot of numbers two and three, isn’t going to cut it in terms of keeping your card unless you have a blinder of a week along the way.

Dave Micheluzzi earned his way onto the tour by finishing on top of the 2022 Australian list and he had an excellent first season highlighted by his wild birdie-eagle finish in Munich’s BMW Open to jump from the pack, grab second place and guarantee his 2025 employment.

The defender this week is the charismatic Min Woo Lee who last year found a course suited to both his length and his unusually expansive repertoire of irons shots.

The course was designed to reward a player with Lee’s skills by giving space off the tee but with greens asking for a wide variety of irons shots and a skilful short game. It would be surprising is he wasn’t somewhere close on Sunday afternoon.