Woods Departs With Australian Golf’s Gold Jacket, Leaves Legacy
Tiger Woods’s first visit to Australia in 11 years may leave a golf legacy lasting decades.
The world’s top-ranked player jetted off last night after claiming his first victory on the continent with a two-shot win at the Australian Masters in Melbourne.
His six-day stay, which came with a $3 million appearance fee, will help spur a golf recovery in a nation where club memberships have dropped 8 percent since 2001 and the local tour lost half its tournaments, officials and players said.
“When you get an iconic sportsman like Tiger, the best in the world and so dominant, then everybody stands up and looks,” Max Garske, chief executive officer of the PGA of Australia, said in an interview at Kingston Heath Golf Club. “His coming down is a perfect shot in the arm for us.”
The game in Australia has gone stale since the heyday of Greg Norman, who won a record six gold jackets as the Australian Masters champion between 1981 and 1990, Garske said. It’s “certainly been on a plateau since 2000,” he added.
In 2001, there were eight professional golf tournaments held in Australia. Only the Australian Open, Australian PGA Championship and Australian Masters remain on this year’s schedule, alongside the Moonah Classic.
Norman, whose 86 career wins include two British Opens, helped draw fans, sponsors and television to the domestic tour. Bigger prize money on the U.S. and European tours has made it difficult to attract high-profile overseas stars, Garske said.
Tempting Top Players
The visit of 14-time major champion Woods may help tournaments tempt more top players into making the trip, according to David Rollo, director of golf at IMG Australia, which owns and promotes the Masters.
“It will encourage more down here,” Rollo said in an interview. “This was never about a one-off spike for us in bringing Tiger down. There will be great flow-on for us from this year.”
More than 95,000 fans attended the tournament’s four days at Kingston Heath, one of eight courses in Melbourne’s so-called Sandbelt. Woods’s arrival by private jet a week ago was televised by Sky News and John Brumby, premier of Victoria state, sat alongside the player at a Nov. 10 media conference that was broadcast live to the nation.
Marty Joyce, the head coach of the golf program at the Victorian Institute of Sport, which has produced players including 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy and U.S. PGA Tour winners Robert Allenby, Stuart Appleby and Aaron Baddeley, is banking on the Woods factor to help attract the next generation of Australian champions.
Future Stars
“We’re hoping in four or five years there will be a kid that we coach who says he got involved and inspired by Tiger coming out this week and watching him,” Joyce said in an interview. “The whole impact across Australia has been immense.”
Officials are guarded against wasting Woods’s first trip to Australia since the 1998 Presidents Cup. Systems have been put in place to assist parents who call up seeking ways to get their children started in the game, Joyce said. The PGA of Australia re-vamped its Web site last week and has embraced social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Having Woods in the field is no guarantee of a lasting legacy. His appearance at the 2002 New Zealand Open was soured by bad weather and mismanagement that reduced the event to “an absolute circus,” said Greg Turner, a former touring professional from New Zealand who won 12 tournaments.
“The business plan was to make money and they jacked up the price of tickets tenfold and then some more,” Turner was cited as saying in the Sydney Morning Herald on Nov. 7. “It alienated people.”
Sell Out
Mindful of the New Zealand experience, organizers priced tickets at A$44 ($41) for the first three days and A$49 during yesterday’s final round, IMG’s Rollo said. The tournament sold out by Oct. 1.
Woods’s influence on the Australian golf scene has already started to show.
Kingston Heath, where it takes about five years to get full playing membership, has seen a spike in applications and is expecting a rise in the number of interstate and overseas visitors seeking to play the 7,059-yard course, said Gregg Chapple, the 100-year-old club’s general manager.
“Golfers now know what the No. 27-ranked course in the world looks like,” Chapple said from his office in the new A$7 million clubhouse, which opened Nov. 7.
About an hours’ drive away, the Moonah Links club has also experienced a jump in interest. In the week leading up to the Masters, the course had 1,000 rounds of golf booked compared with 1,300 for the whole of November last year.
“Hopefully it really kicks on,” said Ogilvy, who finished 14 shots behind Woods at the Masters. “There are a lot of kids hopefully who are dabbling in golf at the moment who maybe will do more than dabble after this week.
• The Agassi Book Tour rolls on. Two weeks ago, Andre Agassi was a married father enjoying a life of repose. Suddenly he’s back in the media/publicity maw, shuttling from interview to interview, answering the same questions again and again (“What made you want to write this book?”), and defending himself from criticism that’s been unexpectedly fierce. In short, it’s 1991 all over again. By this point, he’s well within his rights to wonder what exactly it is, the public wants. We ask for honesty and authenticity from our public figures. “Down to earth,” is among the highest compliments a star can receive. We hate spin and clichés and expressions of superiority. Yet when Agassi shares the intimate details and is relentlessly candid, he takes a public beating. Tough crowd.
• Sa-finis? An “unretirement” notwithstanding — a necessary disclaimer these days — Marat Safin played his final match last week. Before doing so, he engendered some controversy when he suggested Agassi return prize money he won in 1997, hereafter known as the Year of the Meth. In a rich bit of irony, Safin chastised Agassi for his mistreatment of the ATP, the same organization the Russian has spent the better of his career impugning. A monstrously talented player and irrepressible personality, Safin will be missed. His two Grand Slam titles ensures Hall of Fame enshrinement. And still: one is left thinking about the unfulfilled potential, what his career might have been has he been a bit more focused.
Best of three marginalia:
• Taylor Dent is back — no pun intended — in the top 100 after winning the Knoxville Challenger. Take a bow. Or a similar gesture that might not be as taxing on your spine.
• Thanks to Colette Lewis for informing us that Sekou Bangoura Jr. is headed to the University of Florida.
• Yanina Wickmayer began her damage control campaign for her suspension.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jon_wertheim/11/15/three.points/#ixzz0WyBFinMx
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