With two concurrently held ISPS Handa Australian Opens in the books, organisers now have twice the data – and twice as many opinions – to draw from when assessing what our national championship should look like from 2024 onwards. And it should tell them plenty.
Last December’s first-of-its-kind championship endured some logistical issues – and in fairness, many of those (such as how many players made the halfway cut) were out of the hands of the organisers. Despite some misgivings, improvements were made for this year.
The controversial 54-hole cut was rightly dispensed with. No player likes earning weekend action but not playing on Sunday. Moving the All-Abilities Championship to a Thursday-to-Saturday schedule from the previous Friday-to-Sunday timeline was also a smart move.
Other elements remained the same, including the equal prizemoney and the staggered sets of tee-times where a group of men followed a group of women. Chefs don’t fix the parts of a recipe where the ingredients are right.
Which isn’t to say the Australian Open has nailed this particular recipe. The much sought-after voila! moment might still be a few years away.
Either Melbourne or Sydney looks set to host the 2024 championship and in roughly the same week on the calendar, which leads us to peer ahead at how the Australian Open can improve.
An awkward date: It’s hard to imagine the men’s and women’s championships being held separately now that they are resolutely walking down the joint pathway. As a standalone entity, our women’s Open was a financial mess, so there are savings to be made via concurrently held championships. However, timing remains an issue. The current late November/early December date has been in place for the men’s championship for decades. Such a timing still has issues – both the South African Open and Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge exhibition event clashed this year – but will surely remain the model.
Where it becomes tricky is for the women’s championship. The LPGA Tour is finished by this time of year, which is why LPGA co-sanctioning was possible with a February date but not now. A men’s championship in February, however, would dilute that field. And an alternating timeline of November/December one year then February the next would be messy, as there would be long gaps then short gaps between championships. It’s one area where a concession was made and will continue to be made, sadly to the detriment of the strength of the women’s field.
Fix the TV broadcast: Covering golf tournaments adequately in a five-hour broadcast window can be difficult when there is just one championship taking place, but two? Correction: three? That’s why the executive producer(s) of the television feed might have the hardest job of the week.
Some improvements seem obvious to the viewer. Coverage ought to start earlier for rounds one and two – it’s silly in 2023 that the entire morning waves of players are finished when the broadcast starts, especially in this era of multiple channels under the same television network. The next tricky part is when the leaders and nearest pursuers in each championship are playing simultaneously on the weekend. Which shots do you show? Which ones do you omit? Too many were left out of the coverage this year, which detracted from the overall broadcast. One solution might be separate channels showing the two broadcasts, allowing viewers to choose and to switch at their discretion. But that goes against the unified nature of the concurrent championship. Perhaps this is just another concession being made for the sake of unity.
One further thought in this space: if a golf commentator was parachuted into an NRL broadcast, there’d be an outcry. Why were some of Australia’s leading and experienced golf broadcasters sitting at home last week?
Get the players onside: There is still grumbling within the player ranks. Whether it be the prizemoney, the incongruous Saturday draw (where players on similar scores had tee-times separated by six hours or longer) or the joint-championship concept as a whole, it doesn’t yet have player buy-in. And while the players shouldn’t necessarily be the tallest measuring stick for success, the galleries come for them, and the Australian Open doesn’t need more Aussie players sitting out in defiance.
The courses: Your columnist made note of this after last year’s Australian Open, but there’s no doubt a single, 36-hole venue would help ease some of the logistical burdens. Please take the championship to Royal Melbourne or Peninsula Kingswood – and soon!
FULL AUSTRALIAN OPEN COVERAGE HERE
