Golf: Star must be enticed to play Clearwater

Defending champion Lydia Ko. Photo / AP

New Zealand Golf needs to find a way to entice Lydia Ko to line up at Clearwater at the national women's open in February.

The organisation rarely pay appearance fees but a compromise needs to be created to have the most exciting player in the women's game play in New Zealand.

There are few Kiwi superstars who regularly compete in their backyard in any sport but Ko has shown tremendous support for the event in recent years.

As her career continues to surge, her schedule will become more compressed and attending the big-money LPGA Tour tournaments will be of greater concern.

But it would be nice to think that in between million-dollar paydays and majors she could still find the time to play in a country where she is well supported.

"Lydia's so conscious of how popular she is in New Zealand and is a really proud New Zealander and wants to come home and see her friends and play in front of the home crowd," New Zealand Golf chief executive Dean Murphy said.

"The public in New Zealand loves watching her play and she's a great character and a great personality and clearly one of the top two or three female golfers in the world."

Watching thousands of people follow her at Clearwater as she charged to a second-place finish at this year's New Zealand Women's Open in February, it became clear: Ko is a game-changer. In a place like New Zealand it would have been unfathomable a decade ago to think a teenage girl playing a game of golf could create such a stir. But Ko can move the needle and the biggest problem the tournament brass faced earlier this year was crowd control.

Murphy, who will meet Ko and her management team in the next fortnight, acknowledged the difficulties in attracting the 17-year-old to play in a tournament that operates on the Ladies European Tour but you would like to think that Ko could help set a new trend.

Many of New Zealand's top male professionals, who are based overseas, are unable to tee it up on these shores as they cite travel and fatigue but Ko could be different.

She is already among the elite of the women's game and may even become the greatest of all time but somehow, some way, she needs to remain visible in New Zealand.