Peter Williams: Intentions are good but two tournaments won't come cheap

It's been a week of highs and lows for New Zealand Golf. Two Kiwis started the US Open, Michael Campbell announced his new foundation would fund promising youngsters and Greg Turner added another event, at Wairakei, to the GTNZ schedule.

But the New Zealand PGA Championship lost its major sponsor and more than two weeks after New Zealand Golf CEO Larry Graham said he hoped to have some announcement about a New Zealand Open sponsor "in about two weeks", there is still no news.

So, while the world watches the superstars in a major championship, clouds of doubt again gather over the ability of this country to fund international tournaments.

Turner is beginning to make significant progress, at last, with GTNZ. The Taranaki Open was all by itself for two years, Tauranga has been played for the first time, Wairakei will happen this spring with the enthusiastic support of the course's wealthy owners and I'm led to believe something is close to being finalised for the South Island too.

But what of the Open and the PGA? Can this country afford two separate million dollar tournaments within three months of each other? Should the two events be folded into one? If so, which international tour should it be part of - European, the US Nationwide or Asian?

Golf promoters have differing views. One former International Management Group (IMG) manager reckons it's impossible to run two on their current scale and have the sponsors and the promoters get a return - unless the government provides half the funds. They have been significant contributors to the PGA Championship but not, as yet, the Open.

However, Bob Tuohy, the PGA Championship promoter who this week lost ING as the naming rights sponsor for the Clearwater event, is more optimistic.

"I'm hoping it can go to three tournaments, with the addition of a New Zealand Women's Open, but it's a matter of scale," he told me this week. "The European Tour is expensive to be part of. It's a question of what level you pitch the tournament at, and then you have to stay within the tramlines. I hope New Zealand's commercial community responds."

Tuohy is confident he'll find another naming rights sponsor for the PGA and will announce it by August.

But in a contracting economy where companies in all sectors are reducing marketing spend, there are two golf tournaments out touting for a major sponsor within months of their event.

While the Open and PGA go ahead as separate events in November and February, it seems logical New Zealand's latest short-lived flirtation with a two-tournament season will finish this summer.

Reality has to bite. But how to make two into one?

Conducting international professional golf tournaments in an economy this size has never been easy. The search for the most appropriate formula continues.