WPGA Tour of Australasia boss Karen Lunn opens up on golf’s new golden era, her vision for a bigger Women’s Australian Open and why she hasn’t picked up a club in six years.
Karen Lunn may have elected to distance herself from actually playing golf these days, but that doesn’t mean she’s lost touch with what makes golfers tick – female golfers, in particular.
The chief executive of the WPGA Tour of Australasia is right behind the successful push that has seen 60 percent of new golfers in Australia in the past two years come from the female half of the population. Lunn is also right across the professional game and, as a 16-time tournament winner herself, knows the ins and outs of life on tour.
While right now feels like the crest of a tremendously successful wave in Australian women’s golf, there’s still plenty of work to be done to ensure it stays that way. Lunn recently gave us some insights into what’s behind the success – and what lies ahead.
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Australian Golf Digest Women: Hannah Green, Minjee Lee, Grace Kim, Steph Kyriacou, Kelsey Bennett… we’ve officially arrived in a golden period for Australian women’s golf, haven’t we?
Karen Lunn: The depth right now in Australian women’s golf is incredible. I think there are a few things you can put that down to. Obviously, with the performance programs players have available to them, they get every opportunity to do well. These girls get great support from Golf Australia’s rookie program, but I think that the Karrie Webb influence can’t be underestimated here. Karrie has supported a lot of the kids via her scholarship program, really taking them all under her wing and she continues to do that. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on that people don’t read about. Karrie’s not doing this for accolades or anything else. She’s doing it because she wants to give back and support them, and the benefit of having her experience and having them know that they can call Karrie anytime – pick up the phone, text her, whatever – she’s supporting them so much, so I think that can’t be underestimated. Everyone would obviously love to have a mentor like Karrie Webb.
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It feels like this ‘family’ mentality is now carrying through to today’s stars. Having experienced it first-hand with Karrie, they seem to understand how important it is to have access to former players as role models.
I think so, particularly Hannah. I know she’s spoken about it publicly, how much Karrie’s influence and support has meant to her career and that she wants to be that next person. Karrie is a junior girl scholarship ambassador for us, and that’s great to have a name like hers associated with the program, and again, that program is something that’s going to make a huge difference in five or 10 years. If you look at the talent pool, it’s stacked with names like Jazy Roberts, Raegan Denton and Ella Scaysbrook rising up the ranks very quickly. It’s just so good being in my shoes [as chief executive of the WPGA], watching these girls come through and playing in our events as amateurs for four or five years before seeing them contend in big events around the world. It’s an exciting time for women’s golf in this country.
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The Women’s Australian Open at Kooyonga seemed to be well received by all. The course looked mint and, when you throw in LIV Golf Adelaide a few weeks earlier, it was a nice one-two for South Australia.
They have so many great golf courses in South Australia. If you look at the courses within 15, 20 kilometres of Adelaide’s CBD, they are absolute world-class layouts and probably don’t get the recognition they deserve. With the new Kangaroo Island development (The Cliffs Kangaroo Island) coming along, that looks like it’s going to be a very special addition to the South Australian golf scene, too. Steph Kyriacou was actually over there just before this year’s Australian Open and spoke of how awesome the course is going to be. So, I think South Australia really understands the importance of golf in terms of tourism but also understands the participation rates and how golf is booming, particularly in the women’s game. All the recent data is showing that there are more women playing than ever before and they’re more comfortable to play golf in other venues, whether it be mini-golf or indoor golf or driving ranges. There are more women feeling more comfortable playing the game.
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OK, straight up: how close were we to getting some big-name LPGA Tour stars out here this year?
We had really good chats with Charley Hull’s people. We were close to getting Charley, but she is renovating her house and wanted to be home at that time of the year, which is unfortunate. We also spoke to Nelly Korda’s people, we spoke to Lydia Ko’s people and had productive conversations with all the leading players. But they do cost – not as much as probably the guys – but they do cost significant money, and we’ll keep chatting to those people. The best players love coming down here. If we can keep building the Australian Open, keep building the prizemoney, then we can definitely look to get some big names down here.
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COVID is credited a little with golf’s participation boom, but has it surprised you just how much interest has grown in the women’s game?
Absolutely, and I think the media has had a huge part to play. There are not many women in sports media but that is starting to shift. In the past 10 years, we’ve got some fantastic female sports journalists out there that have obviously taken it upon themselves to say, “Well, we need to do a better job of covering women’s sport.” I think the success of the Matildas and the Australian women’s cricket team and many, many other incredible female athletes, what they’re doing can’t be ignored. It seems Australians, in general, are really embracing our female athletes and understanding the importance of them inspiring our next generation of kids.
For me, I’d love kids to play golf, but if they’re not playing golf, if they’re playing sport, their lives are going to be so much better, and I think that seeing kids outside, going to a park and watching little kids, little girls even, play AFL or women’s rugby, it just warms my heart to see that girls can actually think that that’s a game for them. We’ve always heard golf can be a sport for women and girls, but they haven’t always felt that comfortable coming into our sport. So, I think that there’s been a lot of changes since the launch of Golf Australia’s new strategy nearly five years ago. We wanted to make sure ‘all golf is golf’, and I think that we’ve done a really good job in doing that. But we want golf to be a place where everyone feels comfortable and everyone can play, and there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes with Golf Australia and golf clubs about helping them make their clubs more attractive and more gender equitable in terms of board representation. There’s so much work being done behind the scenes, and I think that the fruits of that is what we’re seeing today. I’ve been involved in golf at different levels all my life but it’s a really exciting place that we’re in now, as a sport.
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Do you ever let your mind wander and think about what your career would have been like had you started out today?
Yeah, I do think about it, and I think sometimes that maybe the kids today don’t realise how good they’ve got it. There was no funding when I was playing, there was no funding when Karrie started out her journey, or Rachel Hetherington. Your family had to somehow finance your journey and fund your dream. But it’s also the tech stuff that they’ve got access to now, and just how well the golf manufacturers are really supporting women golfers and making sure that they all have the best equipment in their hands. That wasn’t so easy back in the day, either. You see [today’s players] walking around with their Trackmans – everyone’s got a Trackman [launch monitor], which is great because it provides them with all that incredible feedback and data. They’re not having to just make decisions based on how they feel, it’s all scientific now. I’m a bit of a nerd myself, so I think that would have been really cool to have played in today’s environment with technology playing such an important part. I just hope the girls appreciate the opportunities that they do have and the support they get from the Kinghorn family (a major benefactor of Golf Australia’s rookie program). A lot of countries don’t support their athletes the way we do. I know with certainty that Hannah and Minjee understand and it’s why they’re involved in the Give Back program now. It’s just an amazing leg-up to think that you can turn pro and really not have to worry about money for the first year of your career, or maybe even the first couple of years.
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With all this tech available today, how do your numbers compare to your playing days?
Well, I actually don’t play. I haven’t played for about six years now, just purely because the standard was just getting worse and I was really not enjoying it. But, more broadly, I think that the men’s game has changed so much in terms of the distance and the power, whereas the women’s game has changed in a lot of ways. When I played, the girls were still using 1 and 2-irons. You had a driver and a 3-wood and a 5-wood if you were lucky, and you had a 1 through to 5-iron. Now, there’s obviously all the different rescue clubs, and so it’s changed enormously. There’s also probably less focus put on shot-making and more on hitting the ball straight, whereas we used the old Balata balls and playing in the wind was really hard. You had to really think about the shots you were playing because if you hit it high, it would just come back over your head [laughs].
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What’s the vision for the Women’s Australian Open moving forward and how big can it get?
Well, this was the first year of doing standalone after we tried three years of the joint event, which I actually really enjoyed. I think that the girls probably embraced that a little bit more than the guys did and understood the importance of them being on the same stage as the guys. I think we’ve got a lot more fans of women’s golf now because of the joint events we had for three years, so I don’t think it’s been a bad thing at all for the game. But now that we have three recent major winners as women, I think that there’s a market for separate women’s and men’s opens now. At this year’s Aussie Open we had some of the best European players taking part and had most of our own top players, minus the injured Gabi Ruffels. So, the intention is to grow the event and, importantly, find strong partners. We’ve got a great partner in the South Australian Government for two more years, so there’s an opportunity to make this event even bigger and better. We didn’t have a title partner for this year’s event, so I’d love for us to attract some strong brands moving forward. We’ve got great Australian golf partners like BMW and Rolex and companies like that involved more broadly, but I think we’ve shown the commercial value in an event like this and what it can bring to South Australia and what it can bring to companies that want to get involved in us.
If you look at the broadcast here, we’re on free-to-air and Fox Sports, which is amazing. For a female sporting event to be on free-to-air TV and pay TV is quite unusual, so I think that’s a great starting point. We’re broadcasting internationally through their platform which goes all around the world, so we’ve got great eyeballs on Australia, eyeballs from all around the world. On top of this, the accessibility and friendliness of the players is amazing. I think that we know we’ve got a good product, and now we’ve got the star power in our major winners, and I think that, hopefully, is an attractive enough proposition for brands to want to come on board.
Photographs courtesy of golf australia • getty images/BRENTON EDWARDS •
getty images/Manuel Queimadelos Alonso
