Sue Wooster and Michael Lucas ran out as convincing winners of the 2025 Senior Amateur Championships of WA at a sweltering Hartfield Country Club.
With temperatures soaring into the high 30s throughout the week, endurance was as much a factor as shot-making in determining the fate of the championships.
For Harvey Golf Club member Lucas, it marked a third career victory in the event and a successful defence of the title he won at Rockingham GC last year.
However, while he needed a playoff to edge Paul Chappell in 2024, Lucas led from wire-to-wire at Hartfield to win at a canter.
An opening round of 71 put Lucas firmly in the championship driving seat as he established a five-stroke lead, which he extended to eight after 36 holes.
From there, he was able to comfortably keep the chasing pack at bay, despite dropping four shots on the final three holes as fatigue finally settled in.
Nevertheless, it left Lucas five clear of the field at +6 for the championship, with Victorian visitor Owen Spackman (Thirteenth Beach Golf Links) his nearest challenger and Mount Lawley’s Brett Gossage a stroke further back.
Although he made it look easy throughout championship week, Lucas admitted that he had come into the event with low expectations having rarely produced his best golf at Hartfield.
“This has never been a happy hunting ground for me, so to have a reasonably comfortable win is probably the biggest surprise of my life,” Lucas told GolfWA.
“I wasn’t expecting much this week, but then last Friday I played the Hartfield Open Senior and something just clicked. I managed to carry that over into these last three days and it’s great to win this event again.”
A very popular winner, Lucas had nothing but praise for his fellow competitors, adding: “Moving into senior golf really gave me a new lease of life. We’re a very close-knit group and it feels a lot like playing socially with friends, despite the high level of the competition.”
Wooster’s walk in the park
In the women’s event, The National Golf Club member Wooster scored her second WA Senior Amateur title three years after her first, while she was also runner-up to Nadene Gole at Royal Perth in 2023.
The former number one-ranked senior woman in the world, Wooster simply had too much in the tank for the rest of the field as she achieved the lowest score of the day on each round of the championship to cruise to the title.
She saved her best round of the week till last, closing with a five-over-par 78 to record a seven-stroke win ahead of Carmen Palframan (Lake Karrinyup), with Denmark Country Club’s Marion Nelson third.
Runner-up Carmen Palframan (left) congratulates Sue Wooster on her victory
Despite spending several months of the year in Arizona, Wooster admitted that the heat and humidity at Hartfield had been a major challenge to overcome.
“It was really tough out there. It’s not often that you have to play in 40-degree heat in the middle of the day, so you just got to make sure you stay hydrated, have quality food and stay under the umbrella as much as you can,” she said.
“I’m used to playing on more open, linksy courses, so this week was a bit of a struggle for me. I found it hard to get the pace of the greens and made a lot of three putts, so I’m just pleased to have got it done today.”
View all the final gross and nett leaderboards from the championship here.
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