Looks to bring, skill to keep fans
LAURA Davies says golfers sell golf. The veteran British campaigner could not be more wrong.
The Australian Open has not been played for the past two years and it is because promoting the tournaments was based on flogging women’s golfing skills. So the tournaments fell over.
The event has a history of fainting. It was first played in 1974, lasted to 1977, reappeared in 1994, was not played in 1999 and keeled over after 2004. By then corporate sponsorship was meek, crowd attendance small, interest from clubs to host the event waning.
In the end the Open was a dud
and it fell over with a thud. And it is not as though Australia had a vibrant women’s tour. The only other professional tournament of any interest is the Ladies Masters on the Gold Coast.
Davies’ proposition that women’s golf can survive on the golf alone cannot be sustained.
Karrie Webb is Australia’s greatest golfer. She has won seven majors - one more than Peter Thomson and Greg Norman combined - and has climbed back to No.3 in the world after she lost her swing, if not quite her mind, in 2004 and 2005. She is a Hall of Fame member but not even her presence and expertise was enough to cajole enough sponsors to keep the Open open.
So it screams out that golf, as played by women, does not draw crowds, sponsors or interest. That, of course, is unjust and not representative of their talents.
Webb is every bit as good a golfer as Norman or Geoff Ogilvy, last year’s US Open winner, or any other Australian male whose progress is plotted fastidiously and boldly in the mainstream media. Thomson has rated Webb the best golfer - male or female - to represent her country. Surrounding her seven majors are another 37 wins.
Paul McNamee, hired to re-invent the men’s Open and resurrect the women’s - has made it clear that sex will be used to generate interest in the women’s Open at Royal Sydney this week.
The tournament logo is: “Women’s Golf Has Never Looked Better”.
American Natalie Gulbis, who has not won on the US Tour and is world No.20, is the marquee player this week. Gulbis is bulbous in all the appropriate places. Said McNamee at the news conference for Gulbis: “That is a pretty good package, a pretty good marketing package.”
The message is plain enough. Gulbis is an attractive, well put together 24-year-old woman who is as good to watch for her wiggle as her waggle. During the last US Open, one journalist wrote so lasciviously about Gulbis that that particular edition of the paper came in a brown bag.
Only some of this sits uncomfortably with Webb. She considers that she does not have the body suited to the more frisky outfits other girls now wear so swings her way around the golf course in more conservative clobber. She sells herself short.
“But if girls choose to do that then I have no qualms. We need to take every opportunity to promote our sport,” Webb said.
She said that it was paramount to her to be remembered as a great player and even if she looked as good as Bulbous Gulbis, she might still dress with restraint.
Webb said that in the US the Tour has tried hard to improve its old frumpy, dowdy image. The results have been immediate. TV ratings are up, attendances too. Webb said she had seen figures which showed women’s golf was one of the fastest growing sports.
Lack of media and public support is not a problem singular to golf. Women’s sport is not supported by women, men or the media with the intensity it ought demand. In golf, the argument is put that given men hit the ball further then why would you settle for an inferior product and watch the women.
Men can hit the ball further than Webb and Annika Sorenstam but they do not hit it any better.
It is like saying John Steffensen is a better 400m runner than Cathy Freeman because he has run the one-lap race in a quicker time. Only a madman would take that position.
McNamee will use the same gimmicks employed for the Australian men’s Open played here last November.
There will be late hit-off times so workers can watch some twilight golf, kids can get in for free, designated autograph areas have been provided and go-zones are in place where spectators can move behind the golfers on the fairway and watch their shots into the greens.
Jane Crafter, one of Australia’s most successful international golfers, backs the get sexy initiative.
Her one reservation is if the media concentrates on a blonde bombshell who is blowing up on the back nine rather than a more demure player who is delicately disembowelling the front.
The bottom line, so to speak, is that golf must try this initiative and be brave enough to support it at length. Women golf players are very, very good but nobody will appreciate this unless they see them first-hand.
See the distances they can hit the ball, how cleanly they strike it, how masterfully they can manoeuvre it and how skilfully they can hole it.
So come and have a look at the women. It could be golf at first sight.
