Peter Williams: Australian Open closed off to entertainment

Enthralled by the Australian Open, were you? Did the thrill of watching a sour-faced Robert Allenby stagger to a final round 77 for a one-shot win on a tough golf course have your heart racing? Thought not.

Tournament promoters have to realise that when a television executive tells them their game and their tournaments are boring, as a Channel Seven boss did a year ago, he knows what he's talking about.

Golf has to be aware that it's competing in a crowded sports entertainment market and last Sunday was just not entertaining. The sight of Australia's top players struggling to come to terms with not only a demanding layout but one which was set up at maximum difficulty, bordering on the unfair, never produces spellbinding TV.

Apparently the Australian Golf Union (AGU) believe that, because their Open has a long and proud history with winners including Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman and Gary Player, it should be a tough test where beating par is the preserve of only a fraction of the field. They have to get real.

Entertaining golf comes when a course is set up in a fair manner, taking into account all possible weather conditions. That's why the New Zealand Open at Gulf Harbour this year prepared greens that ran at barely 10 feet on the stimp metre, or in layman's terms, moderate speed.

That meant if the wind got up, the exposed and sloping surfaces would still be puttable. If the wind stayed down, as it mostly did, then the scoring would be super low. And which player doesn't mind making heaps of birdies?

More importantly, which viewer and spectator doesn't mind watching them?

The AGU obviously forgot the lesson of the Victoria Golf Club three years ago when one round was abandoned because of a fast and dry green made unplayable in windy conditions.

So we had the outrageous sight at the 12th at Moonah Links in the second round last week of a greenkeeper watering the putting surface to keep it playable. If this is allowed in the Rules of Golf I'd love to know where - especially as some players had suffered the disadvantage of playing the hole without the watering.

The AGU were just lucky that the player most disadvantaged happened to be the mild-mannered Peter O'Malley. Heaven help us if the grumpy Allenby had suffered the ignominy of a one metre putt blow off the green 20 metres away and turn a bogey into a triple bogey.

So the course set-up was questionable. But what about the venue itself? Moonah Links is an hour's drive from Melbourne and while Victorians are loyal sports watchers, even they struggled to make the trek to a windswept Mornington Peninsula on the final day. Average-sized galleries didn't help the look of the tournament.

The Australian Open will be at Moonah Links about once very three years for the next decade and a half. That's because the AGU, newly constituted with the women's administration into Golf Australia, has a financial interest in the complex. That saves the tournament more than $A100,000 in course hire fees that would have to be paid at say Royal Melbourne or The Australian.

But until the course is regularly set up in a fairer way to cater for all weather eventualities, it will be a battle to gain much acceptance from either players or fans.

The Australian PGA concludes today at Coolum. Thousands of us have played there during our Sunshine Coast holiday. It gives up heaps more birdies and many of us know it pretty well. For those two reasons alone it will make for a far more entertaining watch. The winner might even shoot under par.