PGA of Australia boss Gavin Kirkman on attracting golf’s biggest names, getting a PGA Tour event Down Under, Jason Day’s Aussie hiatus and embracing LIV Golf Adelaide
Australian Golf Digest: What’s your take on the state of the game?
Gavin Kirkman: What I really like is the fact golf isn’t just growing around the world in terms of participation, it’s expanding into all different formats. There are more people playing golf in different ways and that includes the fan base. We’ve got more people following our sport than ever before, so how do we capitalise? As long as the growth that we’ve seen through our team and working not just at the PGA, but working with the WPGA and Golf Australia keeps going, it’s all about: you can’t be what you can’t see. So, getting that balance right of the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia now having 16 broadcasted events – including the two big ones in the Fortinet Australian PGA Championship and ISPS Handa Australian Open – it’s just getting our sport on the broadcast, getting it out there, and that’s going to encourage and get more young women and men to not only follow our sport, but also play its many alternate formats.
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Jason Day hasn’t played on home soil since 2017. How close was he to returning for this year?
I had great discussions with him and his manager and was quietly confident, but in September he had baby No.5 with the birth of little Winnie. After further discussions with his manager, it became obvious the timing’s not going to be right so soon after Winnie was born. So, I think we’ll see Jason Day playing in Australia in 2024 and beyond. He’s very keen to return and the discussions that we had this year, as I said, were more promising than any other year and relayed that he really wants to get down here and now his game is in great shape, as we all know. Jason recently got a seat back in the top 50 in the world (23rd in the Official World Golf Ranking at the time of print), so I think we’ll see him back home in 2024.
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Is there a chance of a marquee name from abroad playing this summer, or are those opportunities not quite there in the landscape right now?
Probably not quite there. We are always open to talk to [high-profile international players]. It’s just, commercially speaking, getting the numbers right to suit our tour and our events. We want to make sure that as we move forward and the game continues to change, we can get marquee overseas players returning onto the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia. But I think where they are at the moment – playing schedules, world rankings and some of the uncertainty around the bigger tours – is going to stop that for this year. But I’m really confident in the years to come that we’ll see a lot more international players come down. We know we’ve got great golf courses and we host and put on really good events, so the players do want to come down here. It’s just getting the economies right and the timings right.
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With merger talks continuing between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, how confident are you that Australia will be a beneficiary of their proposed partnership?
There’s still a lot of work being done with the big tours. I know the PGA Tour and DP World Tour are in discussions with PIF at the moment, but we’ve got to constantly be there telling them what we want and what we feel would benefit our sport and our tour. I think the discussions they’re having and what we’ve been told at this stage is that we will benefit. We’ve seen the way that we work with the PGA Tour – but primarily through the DP World Tour – on pathways. We would love for global events to come down here and for Australia to be a regular stopover on their schedules. I can confirm they’re the discussions that we’re putting forward and that’s both our men and women tours as well. We know how excited we all are about the Presidents Cup coming back to Australia in 2028, but we’d like to see more regular events. We’d like to put on the table that [an Australian event] be on the South-East Asian swing because we know there are events in Japan and Korea and another returning to China. To get the players to come down for a two or three-week spin and play, I think we could really benefit. The other big thing is we want to continue to look at how our players can also return the other way. We want events and big events in Australia with key names, but we want to ensure that our players are getting recognised and our tour is getting recognised as a pathway to go across and play.
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Any indication on timings?
My recent discussions with the PGA and DP World tours revealed they were locking down after the Ryder Cup to go into strategic talks with PIF as a group. From what we were told earlier in the year when it was announced, they’ve got until December 31 to come up with a plan and a strategy, hence why the DP World Tour senior leadership won’t be down to support the Australian PGA or the Australian Open this year. They’ll all be fully fledged into working through the strategy with those three organisations. As I said, we’re looking for really good outcomes for all the global tours and that there’ll be events in all the other countries that I’ve mentioned, including South Africa. I’m confident there’ll be a good resolution and also very hopeful that we’ll be properly recognised in global golf through our alliances with both those two big tours.
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Is the Asian Tour a genuine option for future co-sanctioning agreements with our big events?
I think the Asian Tour is a good pathway. I think all schedules are locked away in 2024, but we’ve had discussions with the Asian Tour. I recently travelled over and had discussions with the Japan Golf Tour and Korean Tour. There are some time periods during the year that would suit those tours as well to come down and co-sanction with us because when it’s cold there, they’re looking for playing opportunities and if we could bring some of that talent down to Australia via co-sanctioning, then they would open up for some of our players to go up mid-year, when our schedule isn’t as heavy, to go and play in Japan, Korea, China, or on the Asian Tour as well. Those discussions are in place. Normally with scheduling and tours, the pre-work is done by the bigger tours, nearly 12 to 18 months in advance, but those discussions are in place with those three tours.
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LIV Golf received an incredible reception in Adelaide. What’s your tour’s stance with the Greg Norman-led tour moving forward, in light of the current merger talks?
At the end of the day, the event is on LIV Golf’s schedule for 2024. The first event, we didn’t have a lot to do with it, but we’ve got four of our members that’ll be playing next year. We’re fortunate enough that through our regulations, they can still come out and play on our tour as well – there are no restrictions. From an Australian golf point of view, we’re really happy with the exposure our sport got through LIV Golf Adelaide. It was a different format, not traditional 72-hole golf over four rounds. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of partying. The fanbase was very different to other golf tournaments, but was it a golf event in Australia and did our fans and our Aussie players benefit? Yes. We’ll be working with them as best we can. LIV Golf Adelaide’s schedule doesn’t clash with any of our events, which has been really respectful. We’re excited that the event will return to Adelaide and bring a new look and feel to the sport.
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Just on the topic of LIV players… with the Presidents Cup coming up next year, can we expect those guys to be available for selection to help create a similar hype that was prevalent at the 2023 Ryder Cup?
I asked that question. It’s a really good question. The world ranking determined whether Brooks Koepka got in the US Ryder team. Some of the players that played LIV Golf from either Team USA or Team Europe, should they have been playing based on form because they didn’t make it with the world ranking? The Ryder Cup is owned by the PGA of America and the PGA of Great Britain & Ireland and has the full support of the tours. The Presidents Cup is owned and operated by the PGA Tour, so it will be up to the PGA Tour to see how they look at the criteria for players to be eligible. The stance they took in Charlotte back in 2022 was that if you weren’t a member of the tour, you couldn’t play the Presidents Cup. We will have to wait and see what criteria will be put in place for the 2024 Presidents Cup in Canada.
Image by Peter Tarasiuk
