Happy Birthday to a Masterful Survivor

BY Liz White | ALPG Tour | 2010 ANZ Ladies Masters | Preview | 02 Mar 2010

With his baby about to turn 21, Bob Tuohy sits back with contentment.

He remembers the difficult birth and the many hiccups along the way, but he accepts that the struggle has made its survival all the more enjoyable.

He is smiling as he talks about his baby, the ANZ Ladies Masters, and how it has endured.

“As a privately owned commercial venture, it is the longest running event in our country’s history,” the golfing promoter said.

In the late 80’s, Tuohy was heavily involved in men’s golf and decided to have a bit of punt with the women’s side of things, after some prompting from Jan Stephenson. The punt has since paid handsome dividends.

This week, eight of the world’s top twenty will tee it up at Royal Pines, including world No. 3 Suzann Pettersen, world No 5 Yani Tseng and three of last year’s major winners, Brittany Lincicome, (Kraft Nabisco) Eun-Hee Ji (US Open) and World no. 7 Anna Nordqvist (LPGA Champion). Add to the mix perennial favourite, World No 11 Karrie Webb and defending champion, Katherine Hull.

“The field we have got is unbelievable. It is unreal,” Tuohy said.

“The girls inspire. We are not playing for a lot of money, only $600,000, which really in modern terms, $600,000 in a place like the Gold Coast of Australia, is not much.”

$600,000 or not, the Ladies Masters tournament has survived some pretty daunting times. It almost never got off the ground.

Three months out from staging the first Masters at the Lakes in Sydney in 1990, major sponsor, Sara Lee had a worldwide company shakeup and pulled the pin.

A few phone calls and headache pills later, and Tuohy, through the help of the PGA’s Don Johnson, managed to get the Japanese company, Daikyo on board and the event switched to Queensland’s Palm Meadows course.

The event took off, but two years later, with the collapse of Daikyo, Bob Tuohy was back to square one.

Tobacco sponsorship was commonplace in the early 1990’s and thus the Alpine Masters was born. The relationship lasted five years before the anti-smoking legislation banned tobacco sponsorship. So Tuohy, yet again, with a great product to sell, was left to chase the cash. This time he found it at a bank, the ANZ.

They initially signed on for three years but this week, the ANZ are now celebrating their own Ladies Masters milestone – ten years of sponsorship.

“They have been great and so too the Queensland government,” Tuohy said.

“Queensland Event Corp, they basically committed dollar for dollar what ANZ did and they gave us the momentum and continuity to go forward.”

The strength of the ANZ Ladies Masters has been in its ability to attract top players from the US, Korean and Japanese LPGA’s and more importantly, gaining its co-sanctioning status with the Ladies European Tour.

“The Ladies Masters has been the base and the growth and the leverage point for women’s golf in Australia,” Tuohy said.

“It has provided a vehicle, if you like, to create an organisation that is now recognised around the world as a world partner on the tour.”

Working closely with ALPG chief Warren Sevill, there are now three LET co-sanctioned tournaments, the $400,000 Pegasus New Zealand Open (which Tuohy also promotes), the $600,000 ANZ Ladies Masters and the $600,000 Handa Australian Open.

It’s enough to get the top LET players to commit, both financially and professionally. Even more importantly for fringe Australian players – only 24 had a regular tour card in 2009 – it gives them the chance to compete against some of the world’s best.

“They have an opportunity, or a pathway to get a card, which is great.”

Tuohy sees the future of the Masters retaining it’s current ALPG – LET co-sanctioned status. He doesn’t want the USLPGA, who once co-sanctioned the event for three years, back.

“What is it going to prove if we go co-sanction with the US Tour and play for $2 million?, it is not going to give us one more player,” he said.

“If we go to co-sanction with the LPGA, you can’t pay appearance money and you can’t do all those sorts of things, and there is no guarantee one player will rock up.”

“The last year of the LPGA at the Masters, to get their top 60 players from their official list in order to go co-sanction, I think they went down to player number 142 in the money list.”

“That says it all – like two in the top twenty turned up … what is the point?”

By maintaining the status quo Tuohy gets to “pick the eyeballs” out of the world’s elite golfing list and he says the product is better for it.

While he laughs at the suggestion that he will still be at the helm for the next 21 years, he is hopeful of the event continuing. Next week he enters into final negotiations with Queensland Events Corp and ANZ and is quietly confident of a positive return.

“We have had all these pre-event negotiations and I am hopeful by the end of May, we will have all the ducks in line for another five year term.”

The ANZ Ladies Masters has been such a success for all stakeholders, you could almost put your house on the deal being sealed.