Australia’s best performer on the PGA Tour in 2024 has the tools to rise even higher this year.

Cameron Davis is a soon-to-be 30-year-old who hails from Sydney’s north, where he grew up playing golf along the windy coastline of the city’s Northern Beaches. He has won twice on the PGA Tour, once on its feeder tour, and an Australian Open. He’s also represented the International team at the Presidents Cup. The tall, ball-striking whiz sat down with us to chat about his journey so far.

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Coming through the Golf Australia national program was really big for me, because it really opened my eyes to what it takes to play multiple weeks in a row on the road, travel and look after your body. It was nice to know a lot of those things before I did it on my own. I had some bad experiences of being told what to do, not quite doing it, and learning the lesson from that very quickly.

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For some players, if they don’t come through that and don’t have access to that early on, they end up having a really hard first year out while learning all those pieces.

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Finishing my amateur career as high up as I did in the amateur rankings really helped me feel ready to turn pro. It felt like, even though I hadn’t won one of those really big ones (Asia-Pacific Amateur or US Amateur) and had not received a start in the majors, my amateur ranking made it an easy decision to turn pro in late 2016.

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Strangely, I didn’t feel like I really had made a great decision to turn pro until I won the 2017 Australian Open. That was a big milestone for me. Winning a tournament, which was my first pro win, in an event as big as the Australian Open, was huge for me. That kicked me on until the other wins [on the Korn Ferry Tour and two PGA Tour titles] happened progressively. But the rookie program and the Australian Open were the biggest moments in my development. After the Australian Open, I began to believe my good golf was good enough to win tournaments.

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I learned, soon enough for it to be really beneficial, that you don’t have to be perfect to win. You have to be really good, but it doesn’t have to be as picture perfect as you imagine it to be before you’ve won a pro event.

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I probably don’t think enough about what I’ve achieved. It’s very easy in a sport like golf to always think about what you don’t have, like more tournament wins under your belt, or a major, or a better season.

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I still haven’t reached a Tour Championship in Atlanta. I feel like those milestones will keep driving me, but because I know what it’s like to win now, I can’t get enough of that feeling. The competitiveness inside makes you not want to ever stop until you have to physically stop. For me, I’m lucky in the fact that no matter how poorly my season might be going, or if things just don’t feel like they’re getting better, there’s just something inside me that keeps pushing me because I want to be a great player. It’s never hard to get motivated.

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Having said that, if I stopped right now and thought long and hard about what I’ve won, I’ve had a good career. I’ve won on the tour that I’ve always wanted to win on (the PGA Tour) and I’ve won one of the biggest tournaments in Australia. It’s really nice to already have those under my belt.

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Then again, I see guys around me doing better. I feel like I see other players, and I feel like, If I get my act together and I keep getting better, I can start achieving those things, too. I don’t think I’m ever going to be done until I’m probably too old [laughs].

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I met my wife at a golf tournament and she doesn’t play golf. Jonika was thrown into a world she wasn’t really familiar with. She’s been so amazing along the entire journey. We’ve been together 10 years now. I was lucky because she was based over here in America, and this is where I wanted to play, and it felt like home so quickly because I had someone who made that happen. That’s a difficult thing when you move to another country. She’s taken so much stuff off my plate. She is my biggest supporter. She’s the one who knows me better than just about anyone other than Andrew, my caddie. It’s been some of her direction that has helped me make some changes for the better. Every time I don’t listen to that sort of stuff, I’ll end up listening later and realising it was a real benefit to my career. I don’t think I would have achieved what I have without her by my side. It’s honestly a little emotional to think about. Hopefully, we’ve just got bigger and better things in front of us.

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My caddie, Andrew Tschudin, has also been so incredible in my corner. He’s been with me through literally everything golf-related, and some things not golf-related, since 2017. He came on the bag for me at the Australian Open that I won, and that was the second event he ever carried the clubs for me. Andrew was a really good tour player. He qualified for the 2004 US Open, won three times on the Hooters Tour in the US, twice on the Korean Tour and once on the PGA Tour of Australasia.

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Andrew and I are still on our way up to better stuff. I’ve got such a great team of people around me that keep supporting me, and the aim is eventually for me to believe in myself as much as they do. We’re working on it. We will get there. I’m excited. 

Photo: Raj Mehta/getty images