Golf: Frustration at local tour's slow progress

Greg Turner has slashed the asking price as he works to manoeuvre a stagnant Golf Tour New Zealand concept out of the sand.

The domestic tour was launched in January last year, when it was touted as a lifeline for struggling New Zealand professionals and a bridge for amateurs planning to seek a living from the game.

It was originally planned to stage an annual circuit of 10 tournaments - each offering $40,000 in prizemoney and featuring a mixed field - to give playing opportunities to the pros and aid the development of the amateurs.

Twenty months later Turner is preparing to stage just his second GTNZ event, the Olex Taranaki Open, which starts in New Plymouth today.

The corresponding tournament in 2004 launched Turner's GTNZ vision and on that occasion the Taranaki Golf Association and New Plymouth Golf Club came up with a $95,000 fee to host the event.

Turner has cut the fee to $60,000, dropping from the offered package a television deal he considered surplus to requirements. The purse available to the professionals is unchanged at $40,000.

Turner hopes the adjustment will see the concept gain wider support, and is hopeful of staging another five tournaments by the end of May.

Instrumental to his plans is for New Zealand Golf to stop dragging its feet and put its weight behind the circuit. The organisation has signalled its backing in principle and has even indicated it will move to have the national strokeplay championship as well as the North Island and South Island championships included in the GTNZ calendar.

But no binding agreements have been reached, leaving Turner a harder task than necessary when attempting to sell the domestic tour, and those three tournaments as a particular package, to potential host organisations.

Turner is baffled over why the tour has not developed as quickly as he envisaged.

"It's been frustrating. Given the success in New Plymouth a year ago you'd have thought it would have been easier than it's proving to be to get more events up and running.

"We've made some good progress on four or five events and I'm quietly confident we'll have another five by the end of this summer.

"In Taranaki last year they made a profit of $35,000 and a lot of clubs could do with that sort of money coming in.

"But it has proved more challenging than I hoped it would."

Turner said he would continue his door-knocking campaign to have GTNZ cemented into the domestic calendar.

"I am in it for the long haul," he said. "I've invested a lot of time to this over the past two years and it has probably cost me something into six figures. I'm not about to walk away from it now."

The Taranaki Open features 39 pros, among them Grant Moorhead, Marcus Wheelhouse, Nick Davey, Ben Gallie and Richard Best.

The amateur field is strong, headed by national representatives Brad Iles and Mathew Holten, who are poised to join the pro ranks.

Other notable amateurs include Josh Geary and Mark Purser while the women's field includes leading amateurs such as Sarah Nicholson, Sharon Ahn, Natasha Krishna and Penny Newbrook plus former European Tour professional Pam Sowden and Scottish professional Claire Hunter.

- NZPA