Late last week the Australasian PGA announced a new event, the Surfcoast Knockout. It was pitched (and portrayed by the media) as the equivalent of Twenty20 cricket.
While the event may end up being a success relative to the numerous Australian golf events that have been consigned to the dustbin of history, to compare it to the fundamentals that has made Twenty20 cricket so successful is naive.
Firstly, let’s recognise that Twenty20 cricket doesn’t involve wholesale changes to the way a result is determined – the team with the highest score wins. The Surfcoast Knockout proposes three days of traditional tournament golf (with cuts along the way) followed by a series of six hole match play events to determine the winner.
But most importantly, what Twenty20 cricket has that this new golf event doesn’t is a condensed playing format – where the result is determined more quickly and there is less “downtime” in between the action on the field.
If golf in Australia is to stand a chance of recapturing the imagination of the sports-loving Australian public, it should be looking to supplement its existing core tournament schedule with an event that turns tradition and practices on its head.
If the sport truly wants to mirror the factors that have made Twenty20 cricket so appealing to a new generation of fans, it should be aiming to condense the amount of time between shots – significantly shortening the time it takes for a player to complete his round.
If that means the game is only open to players with the fitness to get around the course in three hours instead of six, or if we have to have a series of carts to drive players between shots, so be it.
Golf is too slow and deliberate to appeal to a large proportion of “next generation” sports fans. Every other sport has taken steps to speed things up.
Meanwhile, golf continues to stand still. Literally
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