This week's Australian PGA Championship lacks star power..

Australian PGA Championship tee times http://www.pga.org.au/tourns/pga-tour/event/tee-times?season=2015&tour=pga&id=1077

The 2015 Australian PGA Championship, Australia's richest golf tournament, gets underway this week at the Graham Marsh redesigned RACV Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast.

Greg Chalmers is the defending champion and he will have to contend with Tour Pro's Brett Rumford, John Senden, Peter O'Malley, David Lingmerth, Peter Lonard, Ryan Fox, and Ollie Goss

Do any of them send you scurrying to set your PVR for late Wednesday evening ?

Peter Uihlein (184), Brandt Snedeker (38), John Senden (72) are the featured pairing and here are their rankings. http://www.owgr.com/ranking?pageNo=1&pageSize=200&country=All

Up against the select 30 man field at the Nedbank Golf Challenge on the Gary Player Course in Sun City, South Africa, this year's Aussie PGA with a purse of $1,750,000 is dwarfed by the $6.500,000 in South Africa where much more prominent players like Branden Grace (15), Victor Dubuisson, Lee Westwood, Keegan Bradley, Miguel Jimenez, Martin Kaymer (26), Webb Simpson, Henrik Stenson (7), Louis Oosthuizen (18) Robert Streb, Charl Schwartzel (35) and Andy Sullivan (34) are showing up for a top prize of $1,250,000 and even Aussies like Marc Leishman and Steven Bowditch have chosen Sun City instead of the Gold Coast.

Meanwhile others who have played the Australian PGA in the past like Jason Day (2) and Adam Scott (10) Danny Lee (42) Marc Leishman(47) and last week's winner Matt Jones (51) are not playing.

There is an awful lot of golf to be played for huge prizes all year long in the Fed Ex Cup and the Race to Dubai, last week at Leopard Creek Louis Oosthuizen told the audience he had left his home in South Africa 9 months earlier to fulfill his schedule around the world, and remember Hall of Famer Gary Player claims to this day to have flown more miles as a golfer from his home there, than anyone else, some 12 million over his storied career.

While the Australian PGA managed to lure #1 ranked Jordan Spieth with unofficial huge appearance money to play their  Open Championship last year then lucked out when he won it and returned to defend and finish T2 last week, this week's PGA has fallen out contention as far as the stars and even those you might not consider stars are concerned..

Bryan Angus