Kelsey Bennett knows her game can compete with the best in the world as she makes her 2025 season debut at the Drummond Golf Melbourne International at Latrobe Golf Club.

The $30,000 two-day event starting Wednesday is the second event of the WPGA Tour of Australasia schedule and has drawn a host of Australia’s best along with an international contingent bolstered by Qualifying School held over the final days of 2024.

Q School runner-up Jennifer Koga of America makes her WPGA debut, star New South Wales amateur Belinda Ji plays her first event as a professional and Kathryn Norris will have partner Jordan Doull on the bag after she caddied for Jordan in his Webex Players Series Perth victory on Sunday.

Two years after missing out in a playoff at Latrobe to good friend Cassie Porter, Bennett starts the year with a potent combination of talent and belief.

A three-time winner in 2024, the 24-year-old birdied two of her final three holes to earn a 2025 Ladies European Tour card on the number in Morocco.

It is the type of performance that instils a sense of calm when the pressure starts to squeeze on both sides.

“I feel like sometimes when you’re trying to win an event, it just doesn’t happen forcing it way too much,” said Bennett.

“You realise that I am as good, if not better, than a lot of the girls out here.

“All through junior golf and stuff, I played OK, but we had Grace (Kim), Steph (Kyriacou), Doey (Choi), so I wasn’t ever the best.

“All those girls were out-shooting me every week so I never really had it in my head that I’m better than all of these girls. I never thought, Oh my God, I’m going to make it. Never have I had that.

“When I started getting selected to play events for Australia and I did really well at Asia-Pacific, that’s when it starts to click and you go, I can compete with these girls. I can shoot the scores.”

Bennett’s victories in 2024 came at The Athena, in France on the LET Access Series and then at the Women’s NSW Open Regional Qualifier at Dubbo Golf Club.

With a two-shot swing on the penultimate hole, it was there that Bennett displayed the power of knowing how to win.

“I feel like sometimes when you’re trying to win an event, it just doesn’t happen, forcing it way too much,” she adds.

“In Dubbo, I wanted Danni (Vasquez-Boyd) to win more than me, honestly. I was rooting for her so hard. And I think that helped because I wasn’t forcing it to happen.

“I thought, I’m just going to play, and if it happens, it happens.

“Danni is one of my best mates and I wanted her to win so bad but then it just swapped on 17 when I birdied and she bogeyed. It was a two-shot swing and I was like, Oh my God.”

Round 1 of the Drummond Golf Melbourne International is played in morning and afternoon shotgun starts. The morning wave tees off at 7:45am AEDT with Bennett in the afternoon wave that begins at 1pm AEDT.