Why golf fans here have a role to play in improving the Australian Open
Amid the evolving chaos of men’s professional golf across the world, it struck me as joyous to hear calls for a world tour of sorts involving more national opens being played. The birth of LIV Golf seemed to me a natural reaction to the punitive restrictions on players’ freedom imposed by the PGA and European tours.
Bear in mind that national opens are the property of national golf associations (Golf Australia, the Japan Golf Association, the USGA and the R&A, to name a few) and thus beyond the control of the tour bodies. The tours are not naturally generous or given to power-sharing. You may recall that paragraph in the novel The Godfather wherein Don Corleone declared that the most efficient form of capitalism is a monopoly – provided it’s your monopoly.
More joyous was the call for the Australian Open to be considered an integral part of such a world tour. The list of winners of our national open is clearly the most glorious outside the four majors, but it’s as much the quality of our courses as the names engraved on the Stonehaven Cup that give the Australian Open a natural place in a truly global tour.
Yet the reality is that professional players compete for prizemoney, and despite the extraordinary wealth of corporate Australia our open championship cannot compete financially these days. As Golf Australia chief executive James Sutherland shockingly revealed, the broadcasting revenue for the entire golf season in Australia is equivalent to one big cricket event. That said, the absence of major Australian companies as sponsors of professional golf is appalling.
There is a vicious circle on foot here: because the big-name players don’t play the Australian Open in numbers, the broadcasting ratings are slim. Hence the prizemoney is slim. Yet a virtuous circle also potentially exists: if a dozen global golf stars did play, the ratings would be huge across the world and the prizemoney would leap. The problem seems to be how to convert from vicious to virtuous.
I don’t think the 72-hole format is an obstacle to higher viewer numbers. Most people enjoy the final two rounds of a tournament, whether on the screen or at the course as a spectator. Four rounds on a challenging course is a true test of a players’ skill and nerve. The current men-women mixed format, far from being a deterrent, ought to be an attraction. Imagine having one week a year when the best men and women players in the world compete on the same course on the same days! Dream on, many will say.
Dreaming is a natural function of the human mind, and this column is being written not by an AI bot but by a fallible human being. Cam Smith dreamed of winning the Open Championship. And he did exactly that. How did he do it? Simple – he did what was necessary. We golf fans ought to copy his example and go about realising our dream.
First, we need to marshal our collective power. There are millions of golfers in Australia. We need to target those potential sponsors with plenty of profits (banks, airlines, large consumer brand companies) and say to them, “We golfers will repay you if you support our sport.” Instead of passively waiting for a major corporate CEO to write the cheque and then saying, “Oh, thanks,” we need to find a way collectively to urge them to do so. We have the buying power, but we’re not using it.
Perhaps the chaos on foot between the PGA Tour and LIV will somehow end in our favour with a broad world tour of sorts, if the big-name players decide the Australian Open is worthy of their time. But we golf fans in Australia have a role to play, too. It’s time we made our voices heard in the boardrooms.
getty images: Brendon Thorne
