The Australian Golf Major

How can we bring the best of the best down under?

• By:

• Trevor Booth

More than one million people in Australia play golf every year, nearly half a million of those belong to a club, Golf has seen a massive spike in interest since the Covid-19 pandemic began, Australia currently has 6 players inside the top 100 on the men's tours and 4 woman in the top 100 of the women's tour, so why can't we entice most of the top 20 players in the world to Australia for an Australian Major.

Every year in January I look on with a tinge of jealously as all the tennis loving public get to flock to Melbourne to watch practically every top player in the world compete for the Australian Open, on last check there were nearly 1.3 million people that play Golf in Australia every year, so why is there no love for us?

Huntingdale Golf Course, the former home of the Australian Masters

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy my tennis and I love the Australian open, but it got me wondering, why can't Golf pull off a similar thing? Why can't we find a month of the year, like tennis does, and stick a flag in the ground and say that's ours, have four tournaments across the country culminating in the Australian Major.

So when do we play it and how do we pay for it I hear you ask? That's a very good question, firstly lets tackle the when problem.

It doesn't really matter when you play it, you're always going to come up against other sports, that's the nature of our sporting landscape and I wouldn't change it for the world, but how do we find a period of time that can really stand out?

Being a summer sport it cuts out most of the year, and leaves us with October through to March, Tennis and Cricket dominate the December, January and February periods and March sees the return of the Football codes.

October is probably too cold in the southern states to host any tournaments and there's also the issue of limited day light, that leaves November, which his basically free baring the spring racing carnival in Melbourne.

So now we have a window, roughly four weeks to show off our amazing courses, but now comes the next question, money, how do we fund it? This is a complex question and given how much money is on offer on the PGA tour we would need to match if not exceed that to get the best to come here.

I don't pretend to be an expert in finances, far from it, but with nearly half a million Australian's being club members, I'm sure we could add a $10 to $20 a year levy to their memberships to help pay for it, in exchange for discounted entry, that alone gets you 5 to 10 million dollars, and if that kind of investment is being made I'm sure we can hit up the state governments for some cash.

Realistically we would need upwards of 30-40 million dollars in prize money alone across the four weeks to bring the big names down here, but I grew up in a country that had a thriving Golf tour, I used to love watching golf week in week out on the television and listen to the best players talk about how much they love visiting our country.

Image this for a moment, its Sunday night on the east coast, you've just had you're dinner and you sit down on the couch, you turn on the TV and live from Perth for the next 3 hours is the final round the the Australian Major, Prime time Golf, we have to find a way to make this work again, it did once before, I know it can again, we just need to try.

What do you think? is it possible? leave a comment below and tells us your thoughts, thanks for your support and make sure you check out all our other content.