KEY POINTS:
About the only people not impressed by Bill MacGowan's appointment as chief executive of New Zealand Golf are some board members of the North Shore Golf Club where he is CEO and he's doing such a good job they're frustrated to lose him.
"He's got the monolith moving after it was stuck in a rut for 20 years," one said this week about the country's largest golf club.
All of which is encouraging for the national organisation which has lurched from shambles to disaster in the last three years and lacks not just a CEO but high performance, operations, commercial and communications managers as well. Then there's the $1.6m in accumulated losses.
MacGowan came to golf administration after being the top man at the Warriors and twice at New Zealand Football. He ran the successful under-17 Fifa World Cup in 1999. He knows that golf, like all sports, is wracked in politics and self interest.
"I had to get out of football the first time in 1995 because of the politics. They drove me insane," he told me this week.
"I know what golf's like. Here at North Shore we've got 1670 experts on everything. Somehow the best business minds in the country can become board members of a sports organisation and they leave their brains at the door."
One job unfinished at North Shore is a review of the club constitution. Now he wants to move on governance issues at the national body. Like many he's sceptical about the need for a 31-member council and a board. He wants much greater consultation with provincial and district associations and the sharing of ideas.
So what's important in New Zealand Golf ?
"I was in Bourbon Street in New Orleans the afternoon that Michael Campbell won the US Open. I want to see that happen again. I want better talent identification programmes, a high performance programme that's closely monitored and produces results."
These aren't new sentiments but delivery is the issue. Junior involvement and improvement has always been a MacGowan passion. The former national league player became a coach and worked actively in youth soccer.
Now he wants golf to get effective development and high performance systems working.
Part of that issue is the constant clashes of dates for significant events, especially in the prime spring and summer months.
For instance, in the first week of October, Auckland's new Golf Tour of New Zealand event is being played at Titirangi. This is designed for the country's amateurs, men and women to play and compete alongside fledgling professionals. During the same week there's the Asia Pacific men's team championship in Taiwan, the North Island Junior Interprovincial in Cambridge and the Women's National Interprovincial in Napier.
Players will be forced to go to one place when they'd prefer to be somewhere else. It's the kind of administrative hole golf digs itself into because of a lack of co-operation and planning.
On many fronts New Zealand Golf's head office has to start asserting real leadership over the sport.