Australia bids to host 2008 Eisenhower Trophy

BY Bruce Young | Amateur Golf Tour | 2004 World Amateur Team Championships | General | 19 Sep 2004

With a strong team to represent them in Puerto Rico at the Eisenhower Trophy in October, Australian golfing administrators will be looking at the possibility of walking away from the event with yet another prize in addition to the on course prospects available there.

Australia has a very strong bid in place to stage the World Amateur Teams Championships in Adelaide in 2008 and the final decision as to who will be successful is to be made during this year’s event.

Royal Adelaide Golf Club and the Grange Golf Club are the courses which will jointly stage the event if the bid is successful. The only other bid comes from the United Arab Emirates which interestingly enough is part of that same region that Australia comes under in relation to this event. Typically, in the past, two venues from the one region have not competed against each other for right to stage the event.

Outgoing Australian Golf Union President Peter Spence and Executive Director of the AGU, Colin Phillips, will be part of the team that will further sell the merits of the bid at the Rio Mar Country Club.

Both the Espirito Santo Trophy, which Australia is defending this year, and the Eisenhower event are hosted by the successful bidder.

The only time that the event has been previously held in Australia was at Royal Melbourne in 1968 when the US team which included Bruce Fleisher, won by just one shot over Great Britain and Ireland whose team included Peter Oosterhuis and Michael Bonallack.

The 2006 event will be staged in South Africa at the Spier Country Club and Stellensbosch Golf Club just outside Capetown.