118th VISA Open de Argentina, 114th Investec South African Open and 104th New Zealand Open take place this week
24 February 2025 - SHANK Media, by Matt Hooper: This week, and last, are seen by many of the world's top golfers to be rest weeks ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and THE PLAYERS Championship on the PGA TOUR, and three further LIV Golf events ahead of the year's first major - The Masters, in 45 days. In Palm Beach Gardens, Florida the 54th edition of the tournament which traditionally kicks off the Florida Swing takes place. The tournament launched in 1972 and was initially called Jackie Gleason's Inverrary Classic for 1 year before becoming Jackie Gleason Inverrary-National Airlines Classic, then the Jackie Gleason-Inverrary Classic, American Motors Inverrary Classic, and for 40 years it was known as The Honda Classic. For the last two years it has been known as the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches.
Don't you just love sponsored tournaments without a soul?
Meanwhile, 3 of the world's oldest golf tournaments, remarkably take place in the same week. The National Opens of Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand have a combined history of 336 years but will offer a combined prize fund of less than $4million this week, in contrast to the$9.2million on offer at PGA National.
16 of the world's top 50 on the Official World Golf Ranking will tee-it-up in Florida, with all the rest at home with their feet up. The Florida Swing is dead. It is now about 2 tournaments each year, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and THE PLAYERS Championship. This event has been in decline for a number of years following its peak between 2008 and 2018 when most of the worldwide golfers began their pre-Masters schedule at the Honda Classic. The days of a player like Rory McIlroy winning to ascend to World Number One are long gone, and are not coming back.
Honda exiting as sponsor of the tournament was an opportunity for the PGA TOUR to go in a different direction, and try something different, but yet again it chose the same old tired path. Yes, the event may raise charitable dollars for worthy causes in the area, but this is a sports league, and its sole goals should be golf related. The tournament has had its peak, and now has declined due to a change in players priorities as they prepare for The Masters, and due to the changes in the PGA TOUR Schedule over a number of years.
Last week they staged the Mexico Open, that could have been the kick off to a swing of tournaments in the Americas around the big two events in Florida, with the Argentina Open this week, and they could have moved up the Brazil Open by three weeks to play the week following The Players Championship. Next week they stage the Puerto Rico Open opposite the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and tournaments in South and Central America, and the Caribbean offer the TOUR a chance to play tournaments outside the USA, but largely within the same time zones.
Having 16 of the world's top 50, and 49 of the world's top 50 play in Argentina can make a massive impact upon the event itself, but also popularizing the sport in Argentina and wider South America. It would also shine a light on the history and tradition of one of the oldest national opens in the whole sport.
First played in 1905 the Argentina Open has winners which span almost every generation of legendary golfer from the 19th to the 21st century. Established as 'The Open Championship of the River Plate' the first decade of the championship was dominated by 'the founding father of golf in Argentina' Mungo Park Jr. Mungo was part of the Musselburgh golfing dynasty which won a combined 7 Open Championships, and he won 3 Argentina Opens, including the very first. Mungo was born in 1877, in the 19th century, and over the next 130 years some 11 major championship winning golfers would claim the very same title the Scot would inaugurate.
Henry Picard (1937), Paul Runyan (1938), Jimmy Demaret (1941), Lloyd Mangrum (1946), Roberto De Vicenzo (1944, 1949, 1951, 1952,1958, 1965, 1967, 1970, 1974) Tom Weiskopf (1979), Craig Stadler (1992), Mark Calcavecchia (1993, 1995), Mark O'Meara (1994), Jim Furyk (1997) and Ángel Cabrera (2001, 2002, 2012) are all past champions of the Open de Argentina, but a great collection of the sports best players have never congregated in Buenos Aires.
Argentina is a country with a population of some 47 million people, with 157,000 playing golf - by far the highest number in South and Central America. VISA has been the title sponsor of the Argentina Open since 2003, and there can be little doubt that if the VISA Open de Argentina attracted a similar strength of field that the Cognizant Classic has, then they would invest in the event to the same level, giving South America a $9million tournament.
Instead, the VISA Open de Argentina is a $1million event on the Korn Ferry Tour, with no hope at all of any of the world's leading players ever participating, until changes are made.
How the PGA TOUR schedule could look if these changes were adopted
20-23 February Mexico Open at VidantaWorld
27-2 March VISA Open de Argentina
6-9 March Arnold Palmer Invitational / Puerto Rico Open
13-16 March THE PLAYERS Championship
20-23 March ECP Brazil Open
Growth of the game globally might seem irrelevant to those inside the United States of America, and at Ponte Vedra Beach, but if the PGA TOUR managed to make its schedule more cosmopolitan, more global and more diverse then it would attract more new fans from all over the world, which would benefit the sport and the organisation. Sponsors would increase their investment, and they would attract new sponsors from different parts of the world, there is literally no downside to globalization of the schedule for the PGA TOUR or the sport, unless you are an American who believes you should be able to stay at home and have it all.
One American who does get it, is the Asian Tour Number One, John Catlin. Born in Sacramento, California, Catlin has played on the All Thailand Golf Tour, Asian Development Tour, Asian Tour, DP World Tour and LIV Golf, winning tournaments in Spain, Ireland, Austria, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Macau, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. Catlin's biggest single titles came in 2020, when he won the Andalucía Valderrama Masters and Dubai Duty Free Irish Open, then in 2024 he won the Asian Tour Order of Merit in a season which included two wins and the first sub-60 round in Asian Tour history.
Catlin has been a reserve on LIV Golf, playing 5 times in 2024. This week he is one of the headliners playing in the New Zealand Open, at Millbrook, near Queenstown on the beautiful South Island of a golf-crazy country. The New Zealand Open presented by Sky Sport, first played in 1907, has been an Asian Tour co-sanctioned event since 2018, and has also had a partnership with the Japan Golf Tour since 2014. Effectively now a tri-sanctioned event, the New Zealand Open has managed to move forward after an unsuccessful co-sanctioning agreement with the European Tour, and formerly being part of the Korn Ferry Tour.
LIV Golf players Ben Campbell, Lucas Herbert and Danny Lee are joining Japanese star Ryo Ishikawa, Catlin and Daniel Hillier as the most notable names in the field in the shadow of the Remarkables Mountains. Golf New Zealand has been doing everything it reasonably can to attract a stronger, more global field to play in the championship since moving the tournament 'permanently' to the Queenstown region in 2014. New Zealand has a remarkable 404 golf courses, and just shy of 1 million participants (R&A Global Golf Participation report 2023), with some truly stunning, modern designs, as well as more traditional venues. Tara Iti, Te Arai North and South, Kauri Cliffs, Cape Kidnappers and Paraparaumu Beach all attracting thousands of golf tourists to the country, but one destination has emerged over the last 15 years as the 'home of New Zealand Golf'.
Queenstown first hosted the New Zealand Open in 2007, with The Hills staging the championship from 2007 to 2010, then it 2012 and 2013 the venue staged the New Zealand PGA Championship, using a similar pro-am format to the Pebble Beach pro-am. In 2014 the New Zealand Open returned and used the same format. From 2014 to 2020 the New Zealand Open was staged by both The Hills and Millbrook, with the latter taking over host duties in 2023, using both its Coronet and Remarkables courses to accommodate 156 professionals, and 156 amateurs. Now, in 2025, Queenstown has become the home of the New Zealand Open in much the same way as Le Golf National has for the Open de France, Madrid has for the Open de España, Sydney was for the Australian Open and Ontario is for the Canadian Open.
Yet, despite finding a home with stunning golf courses in a truly breathtaking location which is visited by more than 350,000 visitors every year, spending more than $1.8billion annually, the New Zealand Open cannot fulfil the potential its history, and the golf-crazy nation demands.
In 2002 Tiger Woods played the New Zealand Open as a favour to his long-time caddie Steve Williams, but mismanagement of the event, over-charging for tickets meant the event did not attract the large crowds it should have done. With Woods being one of very few global stars in the field, New Zealand was robbed of the chance of being on a global stage.
Being a part of the Asian Tour and having a partnership with the Japan Golf Tour helps it, but a National Open of this age should be on the global stage, and the best should be making their way to this corner of the world every year, not just once in a lifetime, if ever.
Another National Open being played this week is the oldest of them all, the Investec South African Open.
The South African Open has been co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour since 1996, but despite being in its 30th year of that agreement, the event has yet to consistently deliver a great field, and since the Nedbank Golf Challenge arrived on the Race to Dubai, it has played distinctly second-fiddle. The peak of the partnership between the DP World Tour and the Sunshine Tour, in terms of the South African Open came at Pearl Valley Golf Estates, near Cape Town in 2008.
The 2008 South African Open Championship attracted 15 of the world's top 100 golfers, including 3 of the top 10 and a rookie called Rory McIlroy, unfortunately the field has never come close to being that strong since. This year's event is notable for having 3 South African LIV Golf players, including Schwartzel, Grace and Burmester, but due to their participation on LIV, their ranking has nose-dived, and there are just 3 top 100 golfers in the field. The oldest national open in the sport, first played in 1893, in a country which is a golfing superpower, should be attracting the very best players in the world. The best golfers in South Africa aren't even playing - the three highest ranked South Africans are playing in the Cognizant Classic, that should never happen.
How are we at a point when these three championships are all being played in the same week? It is fairly easy, golf is, and always has been fractured. Whilst we continue with the nonsense of multiple tours all over the world then this may always happen, we need a greater spirit of collaboration. Golf needs to adopt a principle of staging 1 national open at a time, so that they never clash on the schedule, and the PGA TOUR and DP WORLD TOUR need to include them on their main schedule, enabling them to reach the level that they should be at, given their age and history. If this can happen then all parties benefit, and more importantly the sport thrives.
Comentários