Ten years ago this month, my wife and I spent three-and-a-half weeks in Australia. It was the rare holiday whose itinerary I would enthusiastically repeat without alteration: Sydney and the Blue Mountains; the Great Barrier Reef; Uluru and Alice Springs; Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula and the Great Ocean Road. And of course Royal Melbourne, New South Wales, Kingston Heath, Commonwealth, Victoria, Portsea and the Moonah Course at The National, among others – all in pleasant heat, and most in bright sunshine.
Fact: every serious golfer should visit Australia at least once in their lives. The “sandbelt” south and east of Melbourne is home to the densest concentration of outstanding golf courses in the world – all featuring wonderfully rolling terrain and elegant, razor-sharp, gravity-defying bunker edges. Meanwhile, New South Wales near Sydney may well be the most enjoyable seaside course I’ve ever played, which given the competition is truly saying something. At the latter, to reduce wear patterns we were encouraged to pull our trolleys across the (very firm) greens and not around their fringes, the memory of which makes me think I must have early onset dementia.
I’ve written before about how the greatest golfers in the world used to winter in Australia – look up the list of Australian Open winners on Wikipedia, and you’ll see what I mean. But Australia is no longer the marquee tournament destination it once was, and the PGA Tour’s decision to begin its new season in October instead of January means that a perfectly good November event like the Talisker Masters at Royal Melbourne (2012 champion: Adam Scott) now conflicts with the OHL Classic at Mayakoba, which awards much more money as well FedEx Cup points, Ryder Cup points, an invitation to the Masters – the real one in Augusta – for the winner, and no jetlag in getting there. How can Australia compete with that?
So when the PGA of America recently announced that it was thinking of hosting one or two of its precious major championships outside of the United States every decade, my heart began to flutter. Of course it’s a great idea to hold more majors outside of the US – golf is becoming increasingly globalized already, with the PGA Tour having visited Malaysia in October and the “European Tour” now officially a misnomer (26 of the 47 events on its official 2013 calendar were held outside of Europe). Three of the four tennis grand slams are hosted outside of the US, and frankly, the reversal of this ratio in golf should embarrass anyone owning a passport. What better place to start righting this wrong than the Melbourne sandbelt?
Nineteen years ago this month, an Australian – Greg Norman – unveiled the idea of a World Golf Tour, which was to encompass eight lucrative events held around the world and televised in the US by Fox. Norman’s project failed to survive the PGA Tour’s legal challenges, but the modern game – global tours, World Golf Championship events, even Fox’s new US Open television contract – testifies to the prescience of his vision. All that remains is to take a tournament that really matters, not an easily ignored Presidents Cup or WGC event, and host it somewhere like Royal Melbourne. It may make the PGA less money in the short term, and it may make those of us not in Australasia bleary-eyed when watching it. But growing the game globally is good. Turnabout is fair play. And nobody watching televised golf from Australia who is thereafter compelled, like I was, to visit and play golf in Australia will regret it.