The Australiasian Tour is stirring with unease. Despite having a long history and enjoying joint sanction on tournaments with the European Tour, the Aussies are struggling to stay on their own.
A footnote in an article in The Age newspaper recently contained strong indications that The Australasian Tour will soon become one with, or at least part of, the Asian Tour.
Aussie PGA Tour chairman Peter Senior said it was “the only option we’ve got†while chief executive Ben Sellenger believes there is a long way to go but said:
“It’s clear to us that to grow, we need to integrate into the Asian market. There’s no science in that.â€
I contacted Asian Tour and Aussie Tour officials for more information but neither has replied.
According to their website, the Aussie PGA Tour appears to comprise 18 events, a couple of them jointly sanctioned with Asia and Europe, two Aussie-Europe ventures and another two co-sanctioned by the Nationwide Tour.
Only the co-sanctioned events offer any significant prize money. The Asian Tour, though well behind both Europe and the US PGA Tour in terms of prize money, still manages to surpass the APGA events in terms of purses when comparing stand-alone tournaments.
Asia also has many more tournaments than what is available Down Under and enjoy joint joint sanction with Europe on a hefty nine events. This is a great deal for both tours with Asia offered higher-prize money events and Europe able to extend their schedule during the winter time.
The situation in Australia puts Asia in a rare state of comparative strength and they will consider any merger with the benefits of Asian players firmly at the fore.
As Golf is becoming more popular here and overseas, plus our many prefessionals in the game, not to mention one or two of them among the 10 best in the world – I think organizers ought to sell the advantages of having some more activity here downunder, if we could get perhaps, some of the asian countries, i.e, like Singapore, just to mention one , which might be interested in doing something in conjuction with Australia…
There is not doubt that prize money is an issue, but I am sure we have here companies willing to put their names and money up to the task…But we need persuaders and good ones….