E-Notes: Can USA make it a sweep Down Under?

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• Last week's HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship was rain-shortened to 36 holes, and while the money was official for Darron Stiles, the victory was not. It was the fourth scheduled 72-hole tournament in Tour history to be reduced to 36 holes and the first since the 2001 Price Cutter Charity Championship.

Darron Stiles

• More on Stiles: His victory boosted his career earnings on the Nationwide Tour past the $1 million mark. He joins Paul Claxton and Tom Scherrer as the only players in Tour history to eclipse that figure.

• While this is the seventh-consecutive year the Tour has visited Australia, this week's Moonah Classic is considered a new event. The previous Tour stop in Australia was played in Adelaide, while this week's tournament will be held in Fingal, outside of Melbourne.

• The Moonah Classic, the Nationwide Tour's fourth event of the season, is one of three new tournaments on the 2008 schedule, joining the Mexico Open and the Ford Wayne Gretzky Classic. Scheduled to participate this week are Panama Movistar Championship winner Scott Dunlap, Mexico Open champion Jarrod Lyle and Darron Stiles, who won last week's HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship.

• The $750,000 Moonah Classic, which offers a first-place prize of $135,000 (based on the current exchange rate; subject to change), will be contested at the par-72, 7,469-yard Moonah Links in Fingal, Victoria. Moonah Links, which sits roughly 90 minutes south of Melbourne on the Mornington Peninsula, served as the site of the 2003 and 2005 Australian Opens, won by Peter Lonard and Robert Allenby, respectively.

• The previous six Nationwide Tour events in Australia were contested in Adelaide, South Australia, with the 2007 event title going to Scott Sterling at the Jacobs Creek Open Championship. His win in 2007, coupled with Nicholas Thompson's victory in New Zealand the week after, gave the United States a sweep of the two events in Australia and New Zealand for the first time since the 2003 season, when Joe Ogilvie and Ryan Palmer pulled off the feat. Americans have a chance to do that two years in a row with Darron Stiles' win last week in New Zealand setting the stage for a U.S. sweep.

• However, Australians have dominated the annual Nationwide Tour stop in their home country, with four of the six winners hailing from Down Under. Gavin Coles won the inaugural event in 2002 and was later joined by Euan Walters (2004), Steven Bowditch (2005) and Paul Sheehan (2006). The only non-Aussies to win the tournament were Americans Joe Ogilvie in 2003 and Scott Sterling in 2007.

• Australia has also dominated the Nationwide Tour in terms of international winners, with 21 different players accounting for 32 victories. Jarrod Lyle is the most recent to add his name to this list, claiming the 50th Mexico Open presented by Corona earlier this season.