American Ryggs Johnston will not defend his Australian Open title, opting instead to compete in the $US6 million Nedbank Golf Challenge at the Gary Player Country Club in Sun City, South Africa.

It is understood that Golf Australia (the governing body and event manager of the Australian Open) had been working with Johnston and his management to entice the 25-year-old to Royal Melbourne to headline his defence of the title.

Yet it appears the significant difference in prize money – the Australian Open's prize pool is worth $7 million less than the tournament in Sun City – means the man from Montana won’t be in Melbourne to defend the Stonehaven Cup.

And, for mine, it's a bit, as we say hereabouts, howyagoin.

Yes, it is understandable for a golf professional to fish where the fish are, particularly if they’ve had so lean a season as Johnston, world No.382 and trending south.

Yet it seems an odd choice to not defend the one significant title you've ever won, which came in your second start on the DP World Tour, which secured you a start in the Open Championship at Royal Portrush, and which made you famous enough around the world of golf that people were curious about the odd spelling of your name.

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Now, there will be hard-bitten professionals thinking, perhaps even asserting, that commercial imperatives trump good manners. Yet Johnston's decision still comes over as a snub of the Australian Open. A snub of Australian golf. A snub, even, of Australia.

And you can’t be snubbing Australia, Johnno.

(Yes, America, I know he's not snubbing the country of Australia. It is something of a jape, chill.)

Now! Of course! It’s not ideal that the defending champion won’t be fulfilling this singular remit, and Golf Australia’s crack media team will be crafting pronouncements through gritted teeth. Wish him well. Disappointed. Everything’s groovy. Rory! 

Or maybe they won't give a stuff.

Because, really, who cares? Sure, it's a bit of a shame. But will the golf-watching public be missing that much? It's hardly Rory being detained in Hong Kong.

Johnston’s 2025 form-line on the DP World Tour includes 15 cuts in 29 events. He's had three withdrawls on top of that. Of the 10 tournaments when he made the weekend, his highest place was T26 (at the BMW Championship at the Wentworth Club) and his lowest a tie for 147th in the Dunhill Links.

He did make the cut in the Open Championship at Royal Portrush in July, though it was very hard to tell if he was happy about it.

Ryggs Johnston on his way to 69th in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship 2025 at Yas Links, UAE. PHOTO: Getty Images

Johnston was world No.954 when he arrived in Melbourne last year. Then he walked around Kingston Heath and Victoria, effectively anonymous, his mouth slightly open, his eyes hooded; a backpacker from Middle America thinking it’s weird there are no Walmarts.

Hard to knock the approach, of course. With nothing going on but the rent, Johnston's apparently nerveless and robot-perfect golf bested all comers, and he was presented with the Stonehaven Cup by Scott Morrison (very few people could tell you why), and it was all hands on deck to find something interesting about Ryggs Johnston.

Yet the only thing was the earlier-reported fact that his parents named him by mis-spelling the surname of Mel Gibson’s character, Martin Riggs, in Lethal Weapon. You beauty.

Then they propped him up in front of media post-tournament, and our Johnno further revealed himself as perhaps the least-charismatic visitor to these shores since Covid-19.

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Credit to the 25-year-old from Libby, Montana, however, because unlike so many of his fellow Americans, Johnston was a world traveller in 2025, visiting 15 countries on a 15-cut romp around Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

In a four-month stretch from February, as reported in northwest Montana journal of note, the Flathead Beacon, Johnston played golf in Bahrain, Qatar, Kenya, South Africa, Singapore, India, Turkey, Belgium and Austria.

And yet ... he can’t come to Royal Melbourne and defend the Australian Open?

The DP World Tour-sanctioned event with an Open Championship and Masters berth for the winner? 

The tournament graced by such former champions as Rory McIlroy, Adam Scott and Joaquin Niemann, with whom Johnston may have been placed in a marquee group, and thus feted and heralded, and feted some more?

The one that made him famous outside Libby, Montana, population 2,775, known as the "City of Eagles" and which is gaurded at both ends by two 60-foot statues of eagles?

Johnno? Bring it in, champion. This may make sense to your bottom line, your colleagues, even to your career.

But from a romance, sports and Australian golf story point of view, I offer an allegory: Covid isn’t over. And, like so many anti-vaxxers, you have made a poor, selfish and short-sighted personal choice.