Australia bypassed for golf majors

Date September 27, 2006

Australia has been virtually ruled out as a future venue for any major international tour golf events.
The last major tournament was the 2001 World Golf Championship Accenture Match Play at Melbourne’s Metropolitan club, which proved a flop with its early January date and lacklustre final between American Steve Stricker and low-key Swede Pierre Fulke.
Since the inception of the World Golf Championships in 1999, that has been the only one of the 26 events conducted that has been staged in Australia and an announcement yesterday all but excludes Australia as a host nation again.
Former Australasian PGA Tour boss and now a tour consultant, Andrew Georgiou said there was simply not enough corporate backing in Australia.
“While it would be nice to see a World Golf Championship return to Australia, the simple fact of the matter is that there is not the sponsorship money in Australia to host one of the events,” Georgiou said.
One of the three WGC tournaments — the $US7.5 million American Express Championship — will be played this week at The Grove course just north of London and WGC officials indicated yesterday a fourth will join the schedule from 2009 and be staged in China for a 10-year period.
This week’s AMEX championship is the seventh staging of the event that was first played and won by Tiger Woods in 1999 in Spain.
Six Australians, headed by Queensland’s Adam Scott, will join Woods this week in the elite 63-player field.
While the AMEX Championship has moved from Spain to Ireland and on to America, the event is headed back to the States from 2007 and, according to US Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, is likely to remain there up to and including 2012.
It means the AMEX Championship, to be known as the CA Championship from March next year, will join the other two World Golf Championships – the Accenture Match Play and the Bridgestone Invitational – in being staged solely in the US.
“Our schedules with the other WGCs are pretty much set through to 2012 with CA becoming the sponsor for an early one in the first quarter with the second one in March, the Accenture Match Play moving to Tuscon from San Diego, and the Bridgestone unchanged,” Finchem said.
“So the only real change for the next several years is that the American Express, played this week, will now be played in the March time frame in Florida.
“We are very satisfied with the performance of the World Golf Championships because even though if you live in a certain market, if you cover the game in a certain market or if you’re a fan, you would like to see them come to your market.”
But Finchem’s European Tour counterpart George O’Grady said he was concerned about America’s domination of the WGC tournaments and hinted other tour bosses felt the same.
“We are not entirely happy that all the events are being played in America but they are being played,” O’Grady said.
“I know the other commissioners can be asked for their views on what it would do to growing the game in South Africa, Australia, Asia and Japan, wherever we go.
“There is a view that the international televising of these World Golf Championships takes the message across the world but I think it also takes a very American message.
“That is one that we would do well to be concerned about and we will discuss that behind closed doors and in our various board rooms,” he said.
Source: theaustralian.news.com.au

Category Posted in Golf News

Comments are closed.