A funny moment occurred during the 2025 West Australian Open at Perth’s Mount Lawley Golf Club [pictured] last October.
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During one of the tournament functions, an official from Golf WA cheerfully announced that Lake Karrinyup Country Club would host the 2026 edition of the championship. Staff from Lake Karrinyup, who were present in the room, turned to each other with matching quizzical looks on their faces, the type that straight away says, We are?
WA’s top-ranked golf course already had plans in place to upgrade its irrigation system this year, a task that would preclude the club from hosting (Lake Karrinyup members are currently witnessing the final throes of the project). It took some discussing with Golf WA officials, but eventually the situation was clarified and in May, Secret Harbour Golf Links was named as the WA Open venue for 2026.
Part of the charm of the tournament is its annual rotation, with no club hosting in consecutive years since Cottesloe staged three in a row from 2007-2009. A pool of clubs in and around Perth traditionally contributes $5,000 annually towards the running of the tournament, even in the years they’re not hosting. But a wave of course renovation work within the rota in recent times has required a few diversions.
Mount Lawley ran a highly popular edition last spring, timed to showcase the OCM-renovated golf course that had re-opened for play earlier that year. But it was also ‘due’, having last hosted the WA Open in 2018. Secret Harbour chiming in this year as a first-time host was a break away from the usual rota, forced partly because of the situation at Lake Karrinyup.
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The 2027 host venue is likely to be announced in the first half of next year, while the location of the 2028 championship is perhaps more intriguing. Three Perth clubs – Lake Karrinyup, Mount Lawley and the Western Australian Golf Club – mark their centenaries that year, giving each one good reason to put their hand up… if hosting the tournament is on any of the three clubs’ agendas.
As one club general manager told your correspondent this week, closing the course for a week to host a tournament means forgoing as much as $20,000 per day in lost green-fee and golf-cart revenue, to say nothing of the varying desire within the membership to accommodate a large-scale event. However, that was at a public-access facility rather than a private club.
If it were simply a case of taking turns, Lake Karrinyup ‘wins’ as it hasn’t hosted the tournament since 2000, while WA Golf Club (2022) and Mount Lawley (2025) have done so far more recently.
State opens on the Australian golf calendar are complex in their own right and each state’s championship sits in a different position this season. The Vic Open, which for so long occupied a pedestal higher than the rest, has lost some of its sheen without the co-sanctioning agreements it formerly had in place. The NSW Open, arguably the strongest of the lot at present, is on a run of government-mandated regional locations and will again be played in the Hunter Valley next month. The Queensland and South Australian Opens are currently dormant (since 2021 and 2007, respectively), while the Tasmanian Open is a three-round tournament played as part of the PGA of Australia’s pro-am series.
The WA Open, therefore, today ranks third in importance across the six states, although its $200,000 prizemoney matches that of the Vic Open’s next January. (Next month’s Ford NSW Open offers an $800,000 purse.)
With differing approaches and levels of influence from the various state bodies as they work in conjunction with the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia, there’s little wonder each state open finds itself in a different position. It’s one element of the tour schedule here that could use a dose of consistency.
