Golf: NZ Open future undecided

Michael Hill wants to keep the championship. Photo / NZ Herald

The only certainty about the next New Zealand Open golf championship is that one will be staged in 2011.

That is about all New Zealand Golf (NZG) director and Open organising committee chairman Richard Taylor is willing to divulge as officials look to build on this year's tournament, which ends today at The Hills near Queenstown.

Crucial details such as a venue, dates and sanctioning status are all up in the air, with Taylor yesterday suggesting confirmation may be several months away.

Jeweller Michael Hill, who has hosted the last three opens on his private course on the outskirts of Arrowtown, as well as fronting as the naming rights sponsor, wants to keep the championship.

However, American billionaire philanthropist Julian Robertson is also interested in hosting the event at his Cape Kidnappers course on the Hawke's Bay coastline.

Taylor would say only that Cape Kidnappers and The Hills were two of "a number of interested parties".

Hill's intervention in 2007 saved NZG financially after it lost more than $1.5 million on the 2005 and 2006 editions of the event at Gulf Harbour north of Auckland.

At that time the open was co-sanctioned by the European Tour, an arrangement continued for the 2007 event, before the tournament was not played in 2008 and the 2009 and 2010 editions were co-sanctioned by the Nationwide Tour, the second tier circuit in the US.

- NZPA