How the 2026 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship came to be at Te Arai Links.
Mark it down in your calendar. On Sunday, November 1 this year, an amateur, probably a young man with dreams of becoming a tour pro, will have a putt on the 18th green at the stunning, oceanside South course at Te Arai Links in New Zealand to win the Asia-Pacific Amateur and gain automatic starts into the 2027 Masters and 155th Open Championship.
It could be the golf tournament of the year.
The 17th edition of Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship will be staged at New Zealand’s Te Arai Links South, located about 75 minutes’ drive from Auckland, from October 29 to November 1. The tournament is run jointly by Augusta National Golf Club and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (the R&A), and each organisation invites the winner a pathway into the next year’s Masters and the Open Championship.
It just so happens that the Open Championship host after the 2026 Asia-Pacific Amateur will be the Old Course at St Andrews, the first men’s major held at St Andrews since Australian Cameron Smith hoisted the claret jug in 2022. The announcement was made by Augusta National Golf Club and the R&A during last year’s Asia-Pacific Amateur at the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai.
The par-72 South course at Te Arai wanders through sand dunes along the Pacific Ocean on firm, fast fescue turf. The last time the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship was played in New Zealand was at Royal Wellington Golf Club in 2017.
The Bill Coore-designed South course opened in 2022 and is ranked 40th in Golf Digest’s 2024 World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses. It features 16 holes along the Pacific Ocean and, until this year, had never hosted a major international event.
Te Arai Links South is part of a coastal development by American duo Jim Rohrstaff and Ric Kayne, co-creators of nearby Tara Iti, which debuted at No.2 in the world rankings shortly after opening in 2015. At Te Arai Links, two publicly accessible courses several kilometres south of Tara Iti sit along the same Pacific beachfront. Te Arai includes extensive accommodation and on-site facilities, eliminating the need for competitors to leave the property.
Australian Golf Digest sat down with Rohrstaff, an American who now calls New Zealand home, to chat about how Te Arai secured the honour to host the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship.
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Australian Golf Digest: Later this year, a top amateur is going to have a putt at Te Arai links South to get into the Masters and Open Championship at St Andrews. How cool does that sound?
Jim Rohrstaff: It’s surreal. Te Arai Links will turn four years old before we host the championship. To have that backdrop on the 18th green of the South course and some great amateur is going to have his life changed forever and play in the Masters and the Open Championship… we’re incredibly flattered and honoured to be a part of this. Our team in New Zealand was celebrating because it’s truly a dream. To host it alongside the team that come with the Masters Tournament, Augusta National, the R&A and the Asia-Pacific Amateur, it’s really moving.
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How did Te Arai Links land one of the world’s most prestigious amateur tournaments?
It’s interesting. I am not sure we were trying to lure them. There was a discussion about what’s been built in our corner of New Zealand over the past 12 years since Tara Iti opened. It turned 10 years old on October 1, last year. There was an acknowledgement of how special that region is. From a North American perspective, I talk a lot about 17 Mile Drive [at Pebble Beach in California] and we [feel we are] the Southern Hemisphere 17 Mile Drive in some way, with Tara Iti being similar to the Cypress Point and then [neighbouring] Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill being similar to a Te Arai Links with public-access golf.
We started having dialogue about the three golf courses and what could potentially work there to host a significant event like this. I went over with Ric, my business partner, to Royal Melbourne in 2023 to watch the Asia-Pacific Amateur and meet everyone and see the infrastructure. I took my son Blake as well, and we just marvelled at it. We’d been to several professional golf tournaments and to see the back-of-house for this event and how well it’s run, we just said, “My goodness, if they’re interested in us, we’re absolutely interested in them. This is going to be exciting if we can come together on how to make this work.” I don’t know that it was us pursuing them or them pursuing us. There was a mutual desire, and we’ve got a team that’s incredibly professional on the ground at Te Arai Links that operates in a very detailed way every day. For our team to work with the Masters Tournament and the R&A to elevate our game and to expose our team to new ways of executing, it’s going to be fun.
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With two golf courses at Te Arai Links (as well as Tara Iti) and accommodation, space and restaurants, Te Arai Links already ticked a lot of boxes for the infrastructure required to host a modern golf championship. But what did you have to consider from the initial discussions until the announcement?
Well, a big part of putting on this event is infrastructure, restaurants, where is the media centre? Where is the television aspect? I believe [Augusta National] chairman Fred Ridley said it’s broadcast in 100 countries around the world. This is a major broadcast event that’s made for television with spectators on the ground. For us, trying to figure out where all the various compounds go was a challenge. When we built Te Arai Links, we naturally built infrastructure as a resort. We’ve got hotel rooms, several restaurants and with the two golf courses, we’ve got a pretty robust practice fairway. Maybe not a tour-sized range like they have here at the Emirates Golf Club [in Dubai, annual host of the DP World Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic], but we’ve got a lot of the physical attributes now. It was really pulling together questions such as, where do the introduced buildings go? You’ve got the folks that do the broadcast for the Masters on site, it’s an A-plus team they bring, and they treat it no differently than their own event. For us trying to figure that out, it was definitely a challenge. It’s tight, but we think we made it work.
One of the things that I’m excited about is this will be a full-immersion tournament for the amateur competitors. Te Arai Links is a place that they will wake up, open their blinds and look out at the Pacific Ocean and the South course they’re about to play. I am not sure they’ve ever hosted the tournament at a venue where all the participants actually stayed on-site and don’t need to get into a vehicle. They will walk down to breakfast, down to hit balls and to their tee-time.
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How much do you anticipate Te Arai Links being showcased to the world and the uptick in demand? There’s already a lot of demand for Te Arai, but even greater demand after the course is broadcast to viewers in 100 countries.
The organic growth we’ve seen in just a few years at Te Arai Links, especially on the heels of Tara Iti, has always been there, but the Asia-Pacific Amateur will expose us to a whole other level of coverage. The backdrop, the eye candy that Te Arai Links’ South course presents for watching great golf is something I can’t wait for. I’m not sure that we can anticipate what’s going to come after the 2026 Asia-Pacific Amateur, but I believe it’ll be pretty significant.
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You’re from Michigan, you’ve lived in southern California. Can you imagine American viewers, who in November will be feeling autumn temperatures getting colder in the US, watching on TV and longing to one day visit this sandy, oceanside golf course in New Zealand?
We talk with friends back in the US that our seasons are so complementary to North America. New Zealand summertime is the wintertime in North America when it’s cold and it’s dark early in the US. [TV viewers] will figure out that you can go down to New Zealand with a direct flight [from New York’s JFK Airport to Auckland] and have some of the best golf on the planet there and have summertime in January and February when it’s light until 9pm and you’re in shorts and it’s warm and sunny. It’s exciting to think about what this event will do to open people’s eyes to the beauty of New Zealand, of Auckland and the scenery of our little place at Te Arai Links.
