KEY POINTS:
It wasn't a great look for golf this week when Sparc doled out $5.63 million in high performance funding to 17 sports. Despite seeking $400,000, the sport that produced this year's Halberg Award winner received nothing.
When you look at the criteria, it's hardly surprising. Sparc fund sports
that show the capability of producing winning world championship, Olympic or Commonwealth Games performances.
The applications closed on October 13, just in time for the assessment panel which included former national hockey captain Peter Miskimmin, 1980s test cricketer John Reid and world championship winning softball coach Don Tricker, to see New Zealand finish seventh (women's) and 19th (men's) at the World Amateur Teams champs.
The timing of those events could have worked brilliantly for golf if the results had been better. They weren't. Now golf gets the bad press, consigned to the status of table tennis, gymnastics, and most embarrassing of all, tennis.
As these pages pointed out last Sunday, New Zealand's standing in international golf is as bad as it's been in 40 years.
Despite us having more tournament players than ever, Michael Campbell and David Smail are the country's only genuinely world-class players. Sparc is sympathetic to golf's plight. The national sports funding agency wants to help but is hamstrung by the way the game is governed.
It might be argued that golf's rankings from the world amateur championships are about the same as New Zealand basketball teams (12th for men, 17th for women) and that sport received $1.18 million.
However, the reality is that New Zealand Golf does not - and can not - have any formal relationship with our elite tour players or even with those trying to make it as tournament professionals.
Sparc chief executive Nick Hill is meeting New Zealand Golf this week to try to find a way for golf to receive some funding under what's known as "sport development".
Miskimmin, Hill's deputy, told me they want to find a way to smooth the path for young players to make the transition from amateur status to professional. But Sparc's way is blocked here too because, once players become professional, they no longer operate under the auspices of New Zealand Golf.
Therein lies the crux of the matter. The governance of golf in this country is antiquated and territorial. Despite NZG and the New Zealand Professional Golfers Association saying they have their best relationship in years, there is still no indication that one is prepared to help the other for the good of our promising players.
Greg Turner, who regularly tears his hair out in frustration at the intransigence of both organisations, has his Wedge (Winning Edge) programme ready to help the likes of Josh Geary and Mark Purser as they leave the bosom of New Zealand Golf and take on the reality of playing the game for a living.
But Sparc can't fund Wedge because it helps professionals and Sparc can't deal with the NZPGA because it's not the national body.
Surely the logical path is for the NZPGA to become attached, even with the thinnest of dotted lines, to New Zealand Golf. But try to tell a body which has been around since 1913 that they have to give up some of their independence and you don't get very far.
After recent results on the course and in the Sparc money-go-round, something has to happen soon.
Otherwise we'll continue to be really good at having players ranked 600 in the world.
