Jacob's Creek Golf Open off to Victoria

[Ho Really]

Vics grab our major golf event
AAP / ROBERT GRANT
August 1, 2007 03:15pm

SOUTH Australia has surrendered its $850,000 Nationwide Tour golf tournament to Victoria.

The event - previously known as the Jacob's Creek Open - will be staged on the Peter Thomson-designed Moonah Links layout, south-east of Melbourne, from February 21-24 next year.

It will continue to be co-sanctioned by the PGA Tour of Australasia and the US Nationwide Tour and has been pencilled in on the U.S. secondary circuit for the next three years.

Australasian Tour PGA boss Ben Sellenger said the event provided an international opportunity to the next generation of Australian golfers.

"We are delighted to be building upon what has been a highly successful relationship with the U.S. Nationwide Tour and at the same time enhancing our early season playing schedule," Sellenger said.

Australians have featured strongly this season on the Nationwide Tour in the U.S.

Former US Amateur champion Nick Flanagan has posted back-to-back victories while 19-year-old Queenslander Jason Day became the youngest victor in US Tour history by winning on the circuit.

The new, as yet unnamed event will follow the co-sanctioned New Zealand PGA Championship from February 14-17.

Jacob's Creek, which had sponsored the tournament since 2002, has withdrawn its support.

For the full story, see today's Advertiser .

and...

Nationwide Tour heads to Melbourne
Wednesday 1 August 2007

The PGA Tour of Australasia today announced an exciting three year agreement that will see a new AU$850,000 tournament staged in Melbourne beginning in February 2008. The event will be co-sanctioned between the PGA Tour of Australasia and the US Nationwide Tour and will be one of the largest prize pools ever offered on the Nationwide Tour.

The PGA Tour of Australasia, in partnership with the PGA of Australia and The Handbury Group, will conduct the event from February 21-24 at Moonah Links, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. The event consolidates the strong US Tour relationship and player pathway, and provides an enormous opportunity to the next generation of Australian golfers to make their way on the world stage.

“We are delighted to be building upon what has been a highly successful relationship with the US Nationwide Tour in announcing this new event, and at the same time enhancing our early season playing schedule”, said PGA Tour of Australasia CEO Ben Sellenger.

“The creation of this new event, made possible by the partnership with PGA of Australia and The Handbury Group, will provide Australian players with a huge start to the beginning of the 2008 golfing calendar.”

Paddy Handbury of the Handbury Group echoed the importance of these events within the Australian golfing landscape. “We are delighted to join with the PGA of Australia and PGA Tour of Australasia in staging this truly international tournament and develop another world class opportunity for our professional golfers to perform on a global stage. We look forward to building this tournament into something special on the calendar”.

“The Nationwide Tour relationship has been an amazing career platform for Australian golfers over the past five years – players like Paul Sheehan, Gavin Coles, Stephen Bowditch, Jarrod Lyle, Euan Walters, Paul Gow and others have been able to take advantage of this pathway to make their mark on the US PGA Tour. This year we have seen Nick Flanagan post back to back victories on the Nationwide Tour, and Jason Day become the youngest victor in US Tour history by winning on the same circuit, which will no doubt signal their arrival on the world stage” said Tour CEO Ben Sellenger.

The new as yet unnamed event replaces the Jacob’s Creek Open on the PGA Tour of Australasia schedule, and will follow the co-sanctioned HSBC NZ PGA Championship, staged at the Clearwater Resort in Christchurch NZ from 14-17 February, creating a strong Australasian start of the Nationwide Tour season.

Jacob’s Creek, a long time supporter of golf and sponsor of the South Australian Open since 2002 have also announced it will not be continuing its sponsorship of the Adelaide based event.

PGA of Australia

Sad to see such an important sporting event leave our state. Especially since it gave us some good exposure on the US market. It is also disappointing that we have three world-class golf courses (Kooyonga, Royal Adelaide and Grange) and no PGA Tour of Australasia tournament. We can only hope we are thrown an Australian Open our way every ten or so years...and that's really hoping.

Cheers

[Will]

This is really dissapointing and frustrating news.

Sometimes I just think to myself whether it would be better is we surrendered all of our major events, all at once to the eastern sattes, to save the constant bad news, when we lose an event every year.

[Cruise]

We also gain events almost every year too.

[aussie2000]

well we lost the the F1 race for the bigger and better clipsal 500 then we lost the tennis event for a bigger and better one now we have lost the jacobs creek open for hopefully a bigger and better one lol

to tell you the truth i didn't know we had a major golf tour , oh and also the windows at the airport, where the gates are, i think some of them feature some of SA's major events, what happens if one of them leave? will the windows be replaced?

[Will]

We also gain events almost every year too.

Such as...

[SRW]

then we lost the tennis event for a bigger and better one

What bigger and better tennis event did we get?

[Cruise]

We also gain events almost every year too.

Such as...

The rugby 7's started this year, I think theres some new international beach volleyball competition to be held at glenelg soon too.
thats off the top of my head there might be more

[Will]

We also gain events almost every year too.

Such as...

The rugby 7's started this year, I think theres some new international beach volleyball competition to be held at glenelg soon too.
thats off the top of my head there might be more

The problem is that we didn't actually take these events from anyone.

We are good at inventing events. The problem is that eventually we end up losing them.

[crawf]

Also the Fringe and WOMADelaide have now been made annual, Tour Down Under is going to be expanded again - Those events events do alot more for Adelaide, then the Golf Open. Plus this upcoming world volleyball championship at Glenelg will help the strain of not having the tennis event or golf open and will do wonders for Glenelg with all those spectators filing into the restaurants, cafes, bars etc...

For our size, Adelaide does quite well in the festival and event department, we have a event calendar that envies most cities. However I am pretty disappointed that we have lost another international sporting event to the eastern states, these events put Adelaide out there in the global audience and bring many interstate and international visitors to our state. And I think its a very poor effect from the State Government for not trying to stop this from happening, sure it might not be their responsibility but still these events bring money and visitors to Adelaide, even a SA company should of bought rights to the golf tournament and kept it in SA.

Plus it would be nice to see the opposition leader propose something like grabbing a sporting event from interstate, instead of once again bitching about the State Government.

[rev]

Nothing will compensate for the hundreds of millions of people who had Adelaide beamed into their lounge rooms every year for the Formula 1.
All the festivals Adelaide can come up with, will never get us that much exposure.
No amount of Rugby 7's. Lets face it, we get the Rugby 7's because we couldn't sustain a full fledged rugby team to begin with.
As much as I love the 500, it cant be compared to the Formula 1, where internationally known motor sport greats such as Senna, Mansell, Hill, Berger, Schumacher participated, right here on our streets with the world watching.

[Ho Really]

Rev, you are spot on regarding exposure. The F1 round of the World Championship was our jewel in the crown. Although not in the same league, the two sporting events we just lost - Australian Men's Hardcourt and SA Golf Open - had plenty of history. The tennis tournament was part of the ATP tour and is the second oldest tennis tournament in the world. Like I said previously, we have three superb golf courses here, especially Royal Adelaide that staged an Australian Open a while back. Geoff Roach summed it up in his column in today's Advertiser. Although understandably biased towards his beloved golf, he is right in saying the state government could have supported golf a little more. Then again, what could they have done if we, ourselves don't support it? I feel sad for Bob Tuohy who has worked hard over the years promoting this tournament. Hopefully our boom here will have some effect at bringing back these two sporting events in future.

Cheers