An exclusive inside look at the power play putting South Australia at the forefront of world golf.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas doesn’t just talk a big game – he delivers.
In a historic move that cements his state as the beating heart of golf in this country right now, Malinauskas secured the league’s flagship event until 2031 on a multi-year extension. As part of the commitment, the Malinauskas Government, in collaboration with the Adelaide City Council, announced plans to redevelop the North Adelaide Golf Course – to be designed by Greg Norman – transforming the facility into what it believes will be one of the world’s best public golf courses. The project will bring future LIV Golf events to the unique and stunning downtown location within the Adelaide Park Lands and provide improved facilities and greater amenities to accommodate
year-round use for the public.
The premier sat down with Australian Golf Digest to reveal what it took to land the deal, why Greg Norman’s vision for a world-class public course in North Adelaide is a game-changer and what PIF governor Yassir Al-Ramayyan is really like to deal with.
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The speculation surrounding the future of LIV Golf and its talks with the PGA Tour seemingly never ends but your announcement in February that LIV Golf Adelaide is locked in until 2031 really rubber-stamped the future of the league down here. How big was that for South Australia?
I don’t mind saying this on the record: naturally we’ve watched pretty closely about the rumours and the speculation on what the future of a partnership between LIV Golf and the PGA looks like. I’m increasingly optimistic that something will get resolved there and it will only be good for all formats, including LIV. It’s our calculation that LIV is going to be around for a long time to come and its success in Australia demands that we do our best to keep the momentum going. LIV is good for golf in Australia, full stop, and I think even the biggest LIV cynics have come around to the view that what LIV brings to Australia is unmatched and it’s good to inspire a younger generation to get involved in this magnificent game of golf.
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More than 100,000 fans packed The Grange Golf Club this year to watch LIV Golf Adelaide. Has it surprised you how quickly this thing has taken off and, better yet, become the tour’s flagship event?
I was optimistic that it would work only because of the fact that Australians have been denied high-quality professional golf for decades. But what I didn’t anticipate, and I’ve been rapt with is the attendance, but they haven’t all been exclusively die-hard golf fans coming along. It’s people coming for a great experience who are curious about golf. And that has blown me away. The first year – amazing ticket sales, just completely eclipsed all expectations. But the fact that it’s grown year-on-year since then says that it’s more than just temporary bit of business. It’s actually grown because people want to be part of it and enjoy it. There’s repeat visitation plus new visitors coming each year, which is delivering growth. And we’re hopeful that that’s the momentum we can continue for the better part of the rest of the decade.
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Since LIV Golf Adelaide’s inception, you’ve worked closely with Aussie icon Greg Norman. But he’s stepped back in his role as chief executive and been replaced by American Scott O’Neil this year. What were your first impressions of Scott, and how do you think this is all going to play out moving forward?
I think Scott’s commitment, along with the privilege of having His Excellency, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) Yassir Al-Rumayyan in Adelaide this year, I think having them see first-hand how keen Australian golf fans are on the concept and the format is only good news for its longevity. Greg’s been particularly facilitating in the transition to Scott and has created a legacy that Scott’s now a custodian of. To be able to seal the deal (the extension to 2031) – which wasn’t done until the weekend of LIV Golf Adelaide this year – to be able to get there late on the Saturday night was a really good endorsement of a partnership that everyone’s committed to.
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Were you at any point concerned that South Australia may lose Australia’s only LIV Golf event?
I don’t think I’m breaching any confidence saying this – I think LIV Golf was committed to Adelaide and we’re obviously very committed to LIV. The issue was about the term length in the context of this massive investment that we want to make in North Adelaide. Because now we’re going to spend tens of millions of dollars building what we believe will be one of the world’s best public golf courses and there’s a big, unique opportunity there. But we were not going to make that multi-million-dollar investment without a degree of confidence that we’re going to play host to LIV for more than just an extra couple of years. So, to be able to secure that longevity makes the economics of that investment sound from the state government’s perspective.
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PIF governor Yassir Al-Rumayyan remains a mystery to most. We don’t hear from him but we all know just how big a player he is in world golf. What was he like to deal with?
Well, I’ve got to say, I was a bit nervous. He’s obviously a significant and accomplished individual and when you go into these engagements you try to get as much information as you can prior to you doing it. And he’s clearly an intelligent man. But I found him to be quite warm, actually. He was good company. He was warm and generous and when we got the chance to speak about a few specifics, he clearly had his own objectives, but was also pragmatic about trying to get the right outcome for both parties. It was a privilege to be able to have those discussions with him. One thing I will say about His Excellency: no golf fan anywhere in the world should be in any doubt about just how committed a golf fan he is.
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You play a bit of golf yourself. What excites you most about this North Adelaide project, particularly as someone with a young family?
Look, there’s no denying there’s an awful lot of work to bring it up to the standard to host an international event with the world’s best players, but we’re committed to it because that parcel of turf and earth is extremely unique. If we have a championship golf course essentially within the CBD, it’ll be globally unique. And then, to have those LIV Golf crowds being able to literally walk straight in the city with all the bars and the restaurants and the amenity it provides, it just improves the economics of the tourist experience for the event itself. So, we see it as a win-win-win. And then outside that, we end up with a piece of community infrastructure that’s 100-percent publicly owned and operated and accessible to all comers. So, young golf fans can see Cam Smith, Marc Leishman and all the other stars play on the weekend and then the next weekend they can come back and play the same course for themselves in a way that you can’t do at a private club. The other element, of course, is golf tourism, which is growing like a chemistry experiment in Australia at the moment. Golf tourism is on the up – we’ve got a lot of baby boomers retiring. With the opportunity to travel and a lot of them playing golf, this provides a chance for Adelaide to have an exceptionally high-quality offering for people who want that experience. They can fly into Adelaide from any part of the world, play at a world-class public golf course in the city and then catch a plane or a ferry to Kangaroo Island where they’ll be able to play at The Cliffs [golf course, which opens next year], which will be one of the top courses in the nation when it’s finished. So, we see a synergy there that makes this investment quite exciting.
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Has being so actively involved in LIV Golf Adelaide inspired you to get out and play more golf?
Yes. But to that end, it’s only frustrated me more because it motivates me to do it without having the time to do it [laughs]. So, when I take annual leave, which I try to do around the July school holidays with the kids, I always pack the sticks. But I’m a hacker. Hopefully one day when the madness of this role is over, because these jobs are always temporary by nature, hopefully I’ll have a bit more time to play. I just want to be a bogey golfer – that’s where I think I can get myself to be: a week-in, week-out, bogey golfer. I’ll be a happy man [laughs].
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It’s going to be special moment for you one day, when you do have time to reflect, to be hitting balls around North Adelaide with your kids and know how big a role you played in making it all happen…
Just as long as a lot of other kids are picking up the sticks and doing it. That’s what you want to see. You don’t want to get talking about politics, but one of the big policy efforts that we are making here is getting kids off phones. We were the first state to ban mobile phones in schools. We were the state that led the charge to ban social-media companies from allowing kids to have accounts under the age of 16. But my theory is that if you’re going to do that, you’ve got to also inspire kids to have other things to do off of their phone. And I’m nonplussed about what that is – I don’t care if it’s dance, art, footy, netball, hockey or golf, you’ve got to have that public infrastructure in place and be investing in it. Look at the off-course explosion in activity around golf with driving ranges and mini-golf facilities – having a facility like that, which is publicly accessible so that kids can get out and off their devices, you beauty!
Photographs: BRENTON EDWARDS/getty images
