KEY POINTS:
Unless A major falling-out between Greg Turner and the New Zealand Professional Golfers Association (NZPGA) is resolved, Golf Tour New Zealand (GTNZ) might not be around to blood our top amateurs and fledgling professionals.
When he started this series with the Taranaki Open in 2004, Turner sought endorsement
from NZPGA and New Zealand Golf.
He invited the NZPGA, who'd never shown any inclination to organise anything similar, to administer the events for the professional players, taking their entries and paying out the prize money. This week Turner wanted two young Bay of Plenty players, Sam Hunt and Jared Pender, to make their professional debuts at the Wairakei Open. Hunt and Pender intend to go to the Australian PGA Tour qualifying tournament in November. NZPGA rules, however, don't allow them to be members until they have a tour to play on.
The NZPGA said because the two weren't members, they couldn't play as professionals. Turner thought that ridiculous and inflexible and has withdrawn GTNZ support for the Wairakei Open, and probably for the Taranaki Open in two weeks.
Although Hunt and Pender will play as amateurs at Wairakei, Turner accuses the NZPGA of bullying.
"We never conceived that they would assume the right to decide who plays and doesn't play," he told me this week. "It's like inviting somebody to dinner at your house and then they change the carpet and the wallpaper and suggest you leave."
The NZPGA are not prepared to change their eligibility rules halfway through a year. Turner says young players around the world make their professional debuts as specially invited players without a qualifying tournament or membership of a PGA.
This is a personality clash between the free-thinking Turner and deeply conservative elements in the NZPGA, and the game is the loser for it.
Turner should be regarded as gold by those who run golf in New Zealand. He's among the best players this country ever had and, in the last four years, has expended significant energy and hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money, to try to get a series of competitive tournaments established around the country.
His vast knowledge about the game at the elite level, and his willingness to share for the good of the sport is an asset you'd think would be devoured by those who run the sport. But Turner is frustrated by the attitude of the NZPGA and New Zealand Golf.
"There comes a time when you take a big deep breath and ask how much things have changed," he mused this week.
After Wairakei and Taranaki, a new GTNZ event at Titirangi in the first week of October will be played without the sanction or assistance of the NZPGA, but with the enthusiastic backing of the club and the sponsor AMP. And that's bound to annoy the NZPGA even more.
Golf in this country has always suffered from administrative bickering. Therefore we shouldn't be surprised something like this has blown up.
The sport, which is stagnating on all fronts, won't progress until attitudes become more flexible.
