After a very successful tournament in Canberra in February, we recently announced that the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open will return to Melbourne in 2014 when the championship is held at the Victoria Golf Club on Melbourne’s renowned Sandbelt from 13-16 February.
The very first edition of the tournament was held at Victoria Golf Club in 1974 and it’s nearly 40 years since the championship was hosted there.
The championship has experienced exceptional growth in recent years, particularly in its international profile as a major women’s sporting event in the Asia-Pacific region. The championship consistently brings the highest number of top 20 ranked golfers in the world to Australia each year through our successful partnerships with LPGA Tour, Ladies European Tour and the local ALPG Tour.
A fundamental part of this excellent period for Australia’s National Championship has been the support and enthusiasm from our title sponsor International Sports Promotion Society (ISPS) through Dr Haruhisa Handa.
Dr Handa’s unwavering commitment to see golf included in Paralympic schedule is something Golf Australia fully supports and we are honoured that he sees the ISPS Handa Women’s Australian Open as a key opportunity to highlight his work in this area.
Together with World Number 6 Karrie Webb and defending champion Jiyai Shin, we’ll be in a position to confirm more of the world’s top 10 players coming to Melbourne in the months ahead for what will be a terrific week of summer golf in Melbourne.
In game development news, Golf Australia and the Australian Sports Commission recently embarked on a research project to develop a new innovative golf program/initiative to attract female participants into the game.
Participation in Australian golf is moving towards greater casual play with the number of registered members at golf clubs in Australia slowly declining since 2000.
Female representation in Australian golf accounts for approximately 20% of the total participants in the game and there is an opportunity for golf to address this under-representation in the sport and increase overall participation.
As part of this research project, Golf Australia ran a national competition to ask the community for their ideas on female participation initiatives and I’m pleased to say we had hundreds of entries from across Australia.
Keep a look out for more on this topic in the months to come.