Geoff Ogilvy says playing at the Barracuda Championship two weeks ago and the Rocket Mortgage Classic this week have wet his whistle. They are his first starts on the PGA Tour since 2018, and so everyone from Webb Simpson to caddies to Tour officials are stopping what they’re doing to say hello.
“It’s good to dip a toe in the ocean again,” he says. He shakes his head when he reports his opening-round score on Thursday at Detroit Golf Club, a 2-over 73.
“Rubbish,” he says.
He’s played plenty of golf since moving back home to Australia at Victoria Golf Club, his longtime playground in his native Melbourne, Peninsula-Kingswood, where he helped renovate the North course, and at famed Royal Melbourne, where he finally became a member. “It’s been a long-term project,” he says. “They never really had pros as members.”
But Ogilvy is quick to point at the difference between golf and tournament golf and as he put it, he hasn’t been “flexing that muscle.”
“It’s a muscle you have to flex,” he says.
Ogilvy is scheduled to be back in September for the Presidents Cup, where he will serve as “chief sandwich maker,” otherwise known as a vice captain for International Team Captain Trevor Immelman. When the biennial match is complete, he says he will attempt to play some more.
“At some point,” he says, “you realize this is what you do.”