Hallam remains upbeat about Open future
BY Anthony Powter | 30 Mar 2008
Golf Australia’s announcement last week that its main naming rights sponsor and principal backer for the Australian Men’s and Women’s Opens was moving on, was yet another body blow for Australian golf.
With naming right sponsors departing from three tour events so far and only nine months before the scheduled season starter, the Australasian Tour’s future is balanced precariously.
Golf Australia’s CEO, Tony Hallam remains confident the Australian Opens will continue to improve and build upon their successes of the last two years despite the departure of MFS, which was undoubtedly brought about by its recent financial woes.
“We have a wonderful core product,” remarked Tony Hallam, in the immediate days following the MFS announcement.
“We’ll just take it one step at the time, talk to the market place, put our product in and gauge the reaction. We’ve conducted post-event reviews with each of our other sponsors, who have their own objectives for the events, and we are pleased with the feedback that we’re getting.”
Hallam is upbeat as to the future of both Australian Opens, despite neither having a naming rights sponsor. He’s confident the market place will react on the brand value associated with both tournaments.
“What we’ve learnt over the last few years is there’s plenty of qualities with both our Men’s and Ladies Opens. There’s a wonderful playing group, being played at wonderful venues and at major market places, like Sydney and Melbourne. We just need to build on these great qualities and that’s one of our immediate focus points.”
In the two years since the formation of Golf Australia, the body has implemented numerous changes to popularise the Australian Opens and make it attractive, exciting and a relevant part of the Australian sporting fabric.
The stadium hole, Go-Zones, fashion parades, twilight golf and increased corporate interaction, certainly raised the profile of the events. Innovative showbiz like measures that bucked the tradition, no more so than the dubbed “party hole” at this year’s men’s event, were considered by most, as being a great success.
“We were pleased with these innovations and we are looking to build on those,” remarked Hallam.
The Australian Open remains Sydney based for at least the next two years, with strong support from the NSW Major Events Corporation as well as corporate sponsors. The Ladies, following recent success at Kingston Heath, looks set to remain in Melbourne for a little while yet, pushing the image tag as an event of “Style and Glamour”.
“It’s always a challenging sponsorship market place, but we are confident that we have two properties that provide either a single corporate or two corporates excellent promotional value in terms of sponsors leveraging their brands into golf.”
Hallam also recognises that both the Australian Opens play a pivotal role in the development of golf in this country and for that reason the events must maintain their position, excitement and more importantly, be seen as a title to win.
Craig Parry’s symbolic victory last November, a reflection of this desire, a desire shared by all players yet to get their name on the Stonehaven Cup and join the honour roll that includes some of the most distinguished international golfers of time, including seven-time winner Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Peter Thomson, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, just to name a few.
As a nation we continue to produce prodigious talents on the world golf stage. Geoff Ogilvy’s recent victory at the World Golf Championship in breaking the “Tiger Streak”, Nick Flanagan’s battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour and being named Nationwide Tour Player of the year, Jason Day’s emergence on the USPGA Tour, Ewan Porter’s immediate rise to the Nationwide Tour, our ladies efforts in Europe, are some examples. All are testament to the international success our players continue to enjoy.
Locally, the game has recently suffered a few setbacks. These are issues Golf Australia and Hallam, as CEO, face in moving both Australian Opens forward. There is little doubt that Australia has the players and the courses to make golf a mainstream sport and return to the popularity levels it has enjoyed in the past.
Last year the Australian Masters lost its naming right sponsor, placing the future of that tournament into a precarious position and some believe the Australian Masters has become yet another statistic.
Hallam remains confident the Australian Opens will continue to thrive on their perceived wave of newfound popularity from the last two years and not be placed where the Australian Masters presently finds itself.
He’s got the support of some of our best players behind the tournaments and strong media backing – that itself should keep the momentum going for the Australian Opens.
“We’ve put a lot of investment into the process, instead of just letting it happen,” remarked Hallam.
“You just look at the wonderful Australian playing group that we have and it’s nice the hear from the likes of Geoff Ogilvy, that we are going in the right direction. Each year we will be adding one or two innovations to the events, particularly with spectator engagement initiatives, and we’ll just keep it moving on in the right direction.”
