KEY POINTS:
Michael Campbell's strong early showing at the HSBC Champions event in Shanghai has been something of an aberration.
Not the fact that US Open winner Campbell put up some low numbers, as most recognise his stellar ability, but it was an aberration because it was one of the few bright spots in a nightmarish year for New Zealand golf.
For a country that prides itself on its egalitarian tradition and easy access to the sport, it has been an inexplicable slump in fortunes.
Forget for a minute the steep rise in club levies and the ensuing backlash. Forget New Zealand Golf's unseemly scrap with Campbell over his condemnation of what he considered their risible attempt at drumming up sponsorship for the New Zealand Open. Concentrate purely on results.
New Zealand has 14 players in the world's top 1000; just two in the world's top 500; one in the top 100; none in the top 20.
Grant Waite is the highest-placed Kiwi on the lucrative PGA Tour at 217, having won $96,950 in the recently ended season. Michael Long was the best Kiwi on the second-tier Nationwide Tour at No 57.
Campbell's prizemoney of €784,000 on the European Order of Merit put him at No 31 and he won over €700,000 more than the next best-placed Kiwi, Mahal Pearce.
New Zealand's second highest-ranked golfer, David Smail, placed 30th on the Japanese Tour.
"There's two ways of looking at this," said former European Tour pro Greg Turner. "All those guys [New Zealand professionals] are either lazy or useless, or they're not getting the sufficient support they need. I don't believe they're useless because they were world-class amateurs. What happens? Do they suddenly lose heart? Motivation?"
The problem is glaring: Somewhere between amateur level and establishing as pros, New Zealand's talented young players fall behind rivals from the States, Europe and, increasingly, Asia. Part of the problem, according to some, is too much delineation, in attitude, between the moneyed and non-moneyed sides of the sport.
"I suspect over the past six or seven Eisenhowers, that's 20-odd players, nearly all of them would have turned pro. Apart from Cambo, where the hell are they? Yes, they've under-achieved, but we have done absolutely nothing to help them after the day they turned pro."
Turner is worth listening to, not just because he was consistent at professional level, but because he's prepared to put his money and, more importantly, his time and energy, where his mouth is. He doesn't accept that New Zealand's golf fortunes would go in cycles because of a small population base and its distance from the US and Europe.
"Unequivocably not," Turner says. "If that was true we would not produce decent amateurs. We are pretty competitive at, effectively, an under-21 level."
But there are factors beyond New Zealand Golf's control that contribute to the dreadful rankings. The game has become increasingly popular and more readily accessible in Europe, buoyed by success in the Ryder Cup.
Norwegians, whose country is in darkness during winter, play on the European tour. The Netherlands won the Eisenhower Trophy. Per capita, Sweden is probably the strongest golf nation in the world.
But that does not excuse the fact New Zealand has not kept up.
"We've gone to sleep at the wheel. Sport has changed a lot in the past 10 to 15 years. If we were doing the same things in rugby that we were doing 15 years ago we would be hopeless by comparison, yet that is what we've been doing at golf," says Turner.
"Our so-called high-performance programmes are still focusing on trying to produce top-level amateur players. We should be looking at producing world-class professionals."
Turner got some high-profile help on board - Russell Coutts, Grant Fox, Tom Schnackenberg, Brett Steven and Anton Oliver among others - and launched a four-tier programme called GTNZ, Golf Tour of New Zealand.
While the most obvious manifestation of the tour is the three tournaments now running (the Olex Taranaki Open being the one that has gained most traction, though the national under-19 tournament was held the same weekend), Turner sees the other three tiers as equally important.
There is logistical help such as telling young pros where they are eligible to play, how to fill in tax forms, or where to practise. This is stuff people take for granted that pros know, but Turner says most are flying blind. There is help to secure seed funding and the mentoring programme using the names mentioned above.
While the concept appears to have zero downside - Campbell, for one, has fully endorsed it - Turner says support from New Zealand Golf has been "in rhetoric".
Here we have, according to the experts talked to by Herald on Sunday, the nub of the problem. Peter Williams, who writes a hard-hitting golf column for this newspaper and edits The Cut magazine has described New Zealand's 2006 golfing year as "diabolical"
"The administration at elite level is very weak," Williams says. "There's a lot of opportunities for players denied through administrative in-fighting. It's the tail wagging the dog."
What he means, and what Turner explains as "arse about-face", is that New Zealand Golf is controlled by the provinces, 32 affiliated regions with 32 different sets of interests, none of which have enabled the national administration to adapt to modern sports requirements.
Turner says that while young amateurs, like Josh Geary at the moment, are better than they've ever been, they are further away from being able to cut it in the professional world than they've ever been. It's a difficult paradox and one, most agree, New Zealand Golf has been ill-equipped to deal with.
"It's an administrative issue in that we haven't adapted to modern realities. It's run by the regions, therefore the well-meaning but ill-equipped councillor in provincial New Zealand is the guy making decisions on what the leading amateurs can or can't be doing," he says.
"It's a bit like the coach of Tasman saying to Graham Henry you can't have Rico Gear this weekend because he wants Rico to play in a warm-up game in Blenheim. That's what is happening in golf... still."
He might be talking out of school but says the professionals of his era, including Frank Nobilo, who won on the PGA Tour, Grant Waite and even Campbell, "would say we achieved in spite of New Zealand not because of it. I can't think of a group of players who have had less support from their own country than New Zealand golfers have."
Turner likes using analogies. This one in particular resonates. New Zealand Golf has been built on a platform that has lasted 80 years. That platform has been regularly renovated but sooner or later, he says, "somebody has to realise the foundations are in the wrong bloody place."
New Zealand should, because it's small and on the other side of the world, be light on its feet and adaptive. Innovation should be the key but instead, too many sports administrations (and golf is by no means alone in this) are stuck in the "No 8 wire" mentality.
"This is the modern world. You can't fix a computer with a pair of pliers; you fix a fence with a pair of pliers," Turner says.
Marcus Wheelhouse could be described as one of New Zealand's "missing golfers".
Part of a group of talented amateurs that benefited from the Mal Tongue experience in the 1990s, he has failed to reach the upper echelons of the professional game.
Now 33 and home for the next eight months to rebuild his game with Tongue, Wheelhouse has a simple reason for golf's slump.
"The programmes for juniors aren't producing results. Wins we had in the 90s have dried up, there's no doubt about that," he says.
"We've got Michael Campbell and David Smail who are flying the flag pretty well for us but apart from that, if we start comparing it to Australia who have 30-odd golf pros on the PGA Tour, we pale into insignificance.
"It comes down to money. If you look at the funding, compared to the 90s - and I'll keep referring back to then because it was our most successful time - there was more from the Hillary Commission, the Sports Foundation and from New Zealand Golf. That had the knock-on effect of some pretty good structure.
"Look what Grant Clements did. In the late 80s he put some great systems in place and it had a knock-on effect right through the ranks.
"Mal Tongue changed coaching in New Zealand, without a doubt. It bumped it up a little. Things like work ethic became the norm. He set a standard that was unsurpassed at that time. Back in those days we were pretty much professional golfers, playing every day, practising every day, just like the pros. We started a culture that everyone wanted to be part of."
It's the breaking down of the traditional ethos distinguishing amateur from professional that Turner sees as crucial to taking the game forward.
He also refers to Australia but says that despite the numbers of players on the various tours the Australian Sports Commission feels that the sport is under-achieving and has compiled an exhaustive report into creating pathways for professionals.
"You don't think the Swedes, the Germans, the French, the Dutch have incredibly sophisticated programmes supporting their players? They do. And we've got nothing."
What those countries don't have is antediluvian attitudes towards turning pro that exist in New Zealand.
"They look at their elite players simply as elite players," Turner says. "As they move from amateur to professional their support requirements alter, but they're not gone."
In New Zealand the pros are cut loose. And look at the results.
