Dialogue: Business drive will alienate the nation's golfing masses

Tiger Woods' participation in the New Zealand Open will be detrimental to most of the country's golf followers, says JOHN REDWOOD*.

Those who justify the increased ticket prices for the forthcoming New Zealand Open by citing the nascent, yet seemingly unquestionable, golfing greatness of Tiger Woods miss the point. Likewise those who draw comparisons to the price of concert tickets, crayfish dinners or skiing holidays.

The debate is not about Woods' status in the game. Were he to retire tomorrow, his name would crop up whenever golfers debated the perennial, and unanswerable, question, "Who is the greatest ever?"

After all, he has already won six major titles in his short career.

Clearly it is impossible to place an objective value on the opportunity to see Woods play, as it would be to place such a value on a sunset or a sonnet.

But this is not a debate about interpersonal comparisons of utility values either.

Rather, it is a debate about sovereignty, about ownership. Woods is not coming here to play in the "Insert Sponsor's Name Here" Invitational Classic, but in the New Zealand Open championship.

Previously this tournament has been run by the New Zealand Golf Association. Next year, we are told, normal service will be resumed.

This year, the rights and responsibilities pertaining to what may be called the commercial, as opposed to the golfing, side of the tournament have been handed to a private company, Open 2002 Ltd.

This is the root of the controversy. Whoever holds commercial rights will use them to their own best advantage. Of course, and there is nothing wrong with that.

In the case of an incorporated society, it will use them to the benefit of its members; in the case of a private company, to the benefit of its owners.

Thus the golf association ran the tournament with the aim of benefiting its members - the members of all the golf clubs affiliated to it.

I do not know who the owners of Open 2002 are, but it seems safe to assume that their focus is at least a little narrower.

Is there a parallel between the change in the management structure of the Open and the privatisation of certain erstwhile state assets? If there is, it would provide Greg Turner with a reason to want nothing to do with it.

Indeed, given the wide dissemination of his political views, it is surely the most likely reason for his stance.

Not that one need share his politics to share his position on this issue. It is easy to imagine the reaction of American professionals (rampant free-marketers almost to a man, many of whom viewed the introduction of the all-exempt tour as some sort of creeping collectivism and, as such, a sign of society's moral decay) if the United States Golf Association were to contemplate handing over control of their national championship in a similar fashion.

To ascribe Michael Campbell's mooted boycott to a fit of pique is at best disingenuous. He promised to support the Open to repay a perceived debt of gratitude to the New Zealand Golf Association, personified by Grant Clements. He owes Open 2002 nothing.

No doubt some people reading this will automatically categorise me as a lopper of tall poppies, perhaps even a hater of excellence.

Neither is true. I have the greatest admiration for excellence - in sport, only patriotism can make me cheer for the underdog.

Others, many of whom will attend the Open brandishing media or sponsors' passes, will - with unwitting irony - argue that I need to join the real world; that sport is now a business and participation as a spectator comes at a price.

They, too, will have missed the point.

I love golf. If those behind Open 2002 were to follow the example of Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts and establish their own tournament, I would go to it.

I would gladly play the price asked, and I would wish their tournament even greater success than is enjoyed by the US Masters.

In such a context I would love to see Tiger Woods play, no matter the cost. I would even pay to watch him play a solo exhibition.

But I am not willing to pay so that a few may make a profit out of something that should rightly belong to so many.

* John Redwood, of Auckland, is an all-too-occasional golfer.