Opinion
It’s fair to say it was a crowded sports weekend in Melbourne. With the AFL claiming centre stage by releasing its 2023 fixture, only mildly inconvenienced by the Socceroos’ World Cup elimination match against Argentina, there wasn’t a whole lot of bandwidth left for golf.
But after a spring conspicuous by an absence of sun and warmth, a turn in Melbourne’s weather coincided with Australian golf reclaiming some of the ground lost over the last two decades.
There was a time when Australia’s summer of golf was a fully-fledged tour, chock-full of high-quality events.
Heaving, knowledgeable galleries would flock to Melbourne’s sandbelt for a glimpse of Australia’s – and the world’s – leading players
It was as if summer wasn’t summer without the voices of Bill Lawry and Richie Benaud in one ear, and Pat Welsh and Jack Newton in the other.
There’s a raft of theories as to why that all wafted away. Comfortable familiarity morphed into staleness. Societal changes meant the slow pace of golf wasn’t a match for a new social media enslaved, instant gratification generation.
But mostly, the USPGA Tour ate golf, in much the same way that the IPL, BCCI, complicit administrators and financially aspirational players are eating cricket. What were once distinct, regional seasons have become year-round concerns, where content and the weight of money is all pervasive.
Impoverished and geographically isolated, Australia became collateral damage, its professional golf presence eroding over two decades to the point where only the occasional Presidents Cup has tempted golf’s heaviest hitters onto a plane southward.
This year’s Australian Men’s and Women’s Golf Open, won yesterday by Adrian Meronk and Ashleigh Buhai, not only heralds a long-awaited renaissance for golf in Australia, but tells an interesting story about the changing landscape for the sport.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
Like all sports, golf suffered at the hands of COVID. Professional tours ground to a halt, recreational golfers were denied their fix, and then in Victoria, when finally allowed to play, they weren’t permitted to use a toilet.
But out of the confusion and frustration a silver lining emerged. People re-set their priorities and, keen to get outside and smell the roses, golf participation rates ballooned. Clubs like my own transitioned from concern over soft membership bases into managing the expectations of prospective members now queued on lengthening waiting lists.
An Australian Golf Industry Council ‘Nature Report’ released in October 2021 detailed a “phenomenal” increase in interest in golf over the period of the pandemic. Nine million Australians were tagged as being ‘interested’ in golf, with only 5 per cent of those being traditional golf club members.
Demographic change is occurring too. The sport still faces challenges around ease of entry for young women in particular, but a glance across any of the fairways in the last four days highlighted just how much golf has become a game for precociously talented, second-generation girls of Asian descent.
The restoration of travel freedoms coinciding with pent-up demand of fans keen to start treading the fairways has contributed to swelling galleries; firstly at last weeks’ Australian PGA in Brisbane, then again this week at Melbourne’s Victoria and Kingston Heath Golf Clubs.
If feedback from spectators is anything to go by, the blending of the Australian Men’s and Women’s Opens – a practice adopted at the Victorian Golf Open in recent years – is a successful concept that deserves to be repeated.
It wasn’t all beer and skittles – more on some needed tweaks later – but golf is one of the few sports where the watching experience, male or female, is equally satisfying. Yes, there are gender disparities in driving distances, but for all intents and purposes, differences are imperceptible. It’s the same game.
Ironically, this weekend demonstrated how the issue that is tearing golf apart at the highest level, the war between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, has worked to Australia’s benefit.
The LIV versus establishment battle that has raged intensely in the USA heated up again this week after Tiger Woods said of the prospect of reunification and LIV’s Greg Norman: “Greg has to go, first of all. If one side has so much animosity, trying to destroy our tour, then how do you work with that?”
With Norman a polarising figure, the popular Cam Smith has – whether by design or accident – become the public face for LIV in Australia, affording the Saudi-backed organisation a level of credibility it may otherwise have lacked in this part of the world.
To golf fans, Smith is relatable. Starved of seeing their homegrown heroes in action, fans just want to reconnect with them, caring little for which side of the LIV/PGA Tour divide they sit on.
Cameron Smith of Australia kisses the Kirkwood Cup. (Photo by Andy Cheung/Getty Images)
In the USA and UK, personal relationships between players have been fractured. By contrast, Australia’s protagonists have been more relaxed and pragmatic about the situation, more willing to respect each other’s choices and get on with playing golf.
It was no surprise that the disappointment that accompanied Smith missing the final round cut was palpable. It was a minor miracle that he made it that far, Smith sitting outside of Friday’s cut line for most of the day, until a series of late collapses saw the +2s called back into action.
There was no underlying story, other than Smith suffering the same fate as many a last-start winner before him; unable to overcome mental and physical tiredness, and the increased media and sponsor demands that accompany a win.
Never mind, it was 2013 Masters winner Adam Scott and the prodigiously talented Min Woo Lee who happily stepped into the breach to fly the flag for local hopes, although when Scott imploded with a poor iron shot on the 17th, Poland’s Adrian Meronk was left on his own to jam in an eagle on 18 he didn’t need, winning by a commanding five shots.
The Australian Men’s Open remains a tournament that is won only by golfers of high pedigree; the recent honour roll including Matt Jones, Abraham Ancer, Cam Davis, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Peter Senior.
The talented Meronk finished the year eighth on the DP World Tour rankings, and is a worthy champion.
Spare a thought though for New Zealand’s Josh Geary who saw the third available automatic British Open qualifying spot go west, when playing partner, Sandgroper Haydn Barron, putted in for eagle from off the 18th green; a moment Barron described afterwards as “surreal”.
On the women’s side of the draw, South Africa’s Ashleigh Buhai held sway throughout the final round, from a group of chasers that included home-grown favourites Hannah Green, Minjee Lee and Grace Kim.
In the end, it was Korea’s Jiyai Shin who missed an opportunity on the last from six-feet to force a play-off, leaving Buhai to tap in and cap off a great 2022, a year in which she also won the British Open.
For all its undoubted positives, the event wasn’t an unqualified success. Galleries were healthy, but even so, this was not the 10-deep throng of Norman’s heyday.
Greg Norman talks to the media in Al Murooj, Saudi Arabia. in February (Photo by Luke Walker/WME IMG/WME IMG via Getty Images)
The mixed format requires a degree of organisational gymnastics that necessitates compromise, in order to accommodate such a large field. That prompted a confusing draw that, on Saturday, saw leading contenders playing on opposite sides of the course, or separated by other groups.
Some players put this down as the cause of slow play, although I suspect this had more to do with Victoria’s layout; holes 1, 15 and 18 all reachable, all serving to bank groups up as they waited for greens to clear.
The women’s halfway cut came in at +13. Conditions were mildly breezy but pleasant, and the two courses were set up exactly as they should be for a national open; tough but fair. That’s simply too high a number for an event of this stature.
Saturday’s controversial second cut reduced the men’s and women’s field to the top 30, plus ties. With the opportunity to win a weekend cheque halved, that’s a strong disincentive for players to travel long distances.
Television coverage suffered as a result; equal status and time being afforded the men’s, women’s and all abilities competitions. It was as if, in the name of political correctness, the opportunity to develop a compelling final afternoon narrative was denied, coverage jumping across all three fields.
Case in point was Kim, equal women’s leader coming to the 18th, inexplicably disappearing from the coverage until re-emerging on the green, having already played four shots to a green most players were hitting in two.
No disrespect is meant towards the all abilities players when it is suggested that, as for other tournaments around the world, this category is concluded before Sunday afternoon.
But these are gripes at the margins. The bigger concern for golf in Australia is to ensure that gains that have been made recently are not squandered.
There are fears that the COVID participation bubble is about to burst, a result of cost-of-living pressures, and more people returning to their offices and beginning to travel more.
For the boomer generation, that’s not really a problem; golf isn’t going anywhere. It’s the TikTok, Holey Moley, ‘look at me’ generation that remain to be convinced.
"It looked like it was gonna go for miles - and then it went nowhere!"
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