No-one should have an issue with Golf Australia’s willingness to embrace diversity in their sport. Last week’s Australian Open carried A$6.8 million dollars in prizemoney, equally split between the Men’s Open Championship and the Women’s Championship which ran concurrently on the same two courses and yes, equality was undoubtedly the real winner. The event was played on two of Australia’s finest courses, Kingston Heath and the Victorian Golf Club. However, watching the event on television back here, I felt a little cheated.
In trying to give equal live and simultaneous coverage to these two high status events proved inevitably counterproductive as each event, in a sense, was cutting the throat of the other. While you were watching live coverage of the men’s event you were missing live coverage of the women’s event and vice versa.
However, I would argue televising each event live and for all 4 rounds is still a better option for television viewers. Have the Men’s one week and the Women’s the next. Who is disadvantaged under that system? Neither I would argue.
Could you imagine, for example, the Bledisloe Cup being shown live alongside a women’s rugby test between Australia and New Zealand. Five minutes of the men’s test and then we whip over to women’s test for the next 5 minutes. It would quickly be seen as television lunacy at its best but that essentially is what we got last weekend with the live coverage of these two Australian Opens. Both events had a host of big names from around the world, underlined by a Korean woman taking out the Women’s title and an American won the Men’s.
In their defence of their dual coverage approach, Golf Australia argued not very convincingly they had to juggle the interests of many different stakeholder wishes. The interests of the poor old television viewers here and across the world didn’t seem to rate terribly highly.
So to the golf. There were a handful of Kiwis competing in both events. The best of the Kiwis was the little-known pro from these shores, Hanee Song, who finished 10th in the Women’s championship and earned around A$30,000 for her troubles.
Hanee, who plays on the Ladies European Tour, has had her best ever fortnight as a pro finishing second the week prior to the Australian Open in the NSW PGA. These two top 10 finishes back-to-back have seen her world ranking improve by 93 places. She now sits at 475 on the women’s world ranking list. Finishing in the top 10 at the Australian Open suggests she is more than capable of continuing this rapid ranking rise.
For the Kiwi men, this event offered valuable ranking points for those playing on the DP World Tour - Daniel Hillier, Kazuma Kobori and Sam Jones. Unfortunately Sam didn’t make the cut, but Hillier and Kobori made a good fist of things over the weekend. Kazuma Kobori, after a brilliant opening round of 65, hung in there to record rounds of 74, 72 and 72 for a share of 26th place and Hillier, who began the last day just inside the top ten, faded with a round of 75 to see him slip to 35th place overall.
Kobori in his first year as a pro now stands in 26th place on the DP rankings, half a dozen places ahead of Daniel Hillier.
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