Golf: NZPGA championship on back-burner

By Graham Skellern

The much-vaunted return of the $1 million New Zealand PGA championship to the Australasian golf tour has been put on hold.

When tour officials this week released the official schedule for the 1999-2000 season, the NZPGA championship - set to be played at Gulf Harbour on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula - had suddenly disappeared from the March 2-5 slot.

Instead, the season-ending Tour championship has been moved forward a week.

Arthur Sanderson, the executive director of the Australasian PGA Tour, said he had been contacted by the promoters, Parallel Media Group, a fortnight ago to say they were "having difficulties arranging the appropriate level of sponsorship.

"We had to release the schedule, and it was a great disappointment having to leave out the NZPGA. New Zealand could do with a second tournament," Sanderson said.

There was "every possibility" the event would appear on the tour schedule the following year.

PGA officials in New Zealand would not confirm that the proposed tournament had fallen over. The NZPGA president, Richard Ellis said there were sponsors and money in place and the promoter was still "working with us.

"The schedule changes every five minutes."

Sanderson confirmed that the NZPGA championship could not now be fitted in to the 1999-2000 schedule, which begins with the FedEx PGA championship in Singapore on November 2-7.

But he said there was no reason why the New Zealand tournament could not be played after the season had ended.

Meanwhile, Paraparaumu Beach has been confirmed as the venue for the New Zealand Open, irrespective of the increased television costs.

Grant Clements, the chief executive of the NZ Golf Association, said there were some issues still to be resolved, such as the television costs, but "we had to decide on a venue before anyone could do some pricing.

"It would have been cheaper to hold it in Auckland but we decided to have the best venue and fit everything around it. Paraparaumu is where we wanted to play the tournament."

The Paraparaumu links course, one of the best in the country, will stage the NZ Open for the 11th time over Wellington's Anniversary weekend from January 20-23, making it the first open championship of the new millennium.

The new date should attract a strong field as the golfers will be dusting off their clubs after the Christmas break and preparing for a New Year on the road, particularly since the New Zealand tournament falls a week before Perth's $1.5 million Heinken Classic, which is also a European PGA Tour event.