Golf: NZ Open staying in Auckland

By MARTIN DAVIDSON

It could be many years before the New Zealand Open is again staged outside Auckland.

New Zealand Golf Association chief executive Peter Dale admitted as much yesterday by saying the economic realities of staging the championship demands it is held within easy reach of corporate support.

That means this country's largest city, Auckland, has a mortgage on hosting the event for the foreseeable future.

Corporate support is crucial because the event, held this year at Middlemore in Auckland, offered $700,000 in prizemoney and cost about $2.3 million to stage.

"It is our intention to take it outside of Auckland when we can," Dale said. "But we just have to face facts. Auckland is where the big businesses are, it's where the main television station is.

"It is harder to sell corporate hospitality outside Auckland.

"Who would I sell it to in Wellington? Tranz Rail? The biggest employers in Wellington now are the city council, hospitals and the university.

"The most important thing for us is for the nation to see the New Zealand Open live and free to air on television."

The golf association will have to pay TVNZ $300,000 to provide live coverage of the tournament in Auckland. That fee increases to $500,000 for a tournament in Wellington.

Dale is not about to aim a backhander at TVNZ for its fee demands, despite the extra pressure they place on the association. In the past financial year it posted a deficit of $180,000, much of it written-off debts from Tiger Woods' visit to last year's New Zealand Open.

"We're not knocking TVNZ, they do a wonderful job for us, but they've got costs as well ... "

Economics won out over sentiment when the association decided to hold next year's event in January in Auckland.

Dale has yet to confirm a host club, but it is understood it will be held at Gulf Harbour on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, which hosted the 1998 World Cup of Golf.

There was a strong case to stage next year's tournament at the Wellington Golf Club's Heretaunga course where Sir Bob Charles won the first of his four New Zealand Open title in 1954.

Charles expects next year's championship to be his last and many considered the sentimental attachment of playing the tournament at Heretaunga would win the day.

"It's important that it is commercially successful," Dale said.

"We are paying prizemoney, it's a big event, we desperately want it on television so that 450,000 golfers in New Zealand can see it. That's actually more important than holding it in a particular city."

The New Zealand Open in recent years has been shared between Auckland and Wellington, with Paraparaumu Beach on the Kapiti Coast, north of the capital, hosting the event eight times since 1988.

It was last held in the South Island, at Russley in Christchurch, in 1985.

From its inception in 1907 until the 1980s it was regularly taken to the provinces, with Napier, Manawatu, Otago, Wanganui, New Plymouth, Hastings and Invercargill all featuring on the roster.

- NZPA