Australian Open, not The Players, should be golf’s fifth major
The Australian Open has a rich history and is played on some of the world’s best courses. Now it is the time to elevate it to major status.
With the DP World Tour back in the sand-belt region for the Australian Open this week, it’s time to revisit a long-standing argument in the golfing world.
Should professional golf add a fifth major to its repertoire?
Well over a year ago, ahead of The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee made the case for The Players Championship becoming golf’s fifth major.
I am here to tell you that another event should carry this distinction: the Australian Open, not The Players.
Parts of Chamblee’s argument rested on his animus towards LIV Golf, while other solid points he made stemmed from the rich history of The Players.
“LIV has managed to poach some compelling players away from the PGA Tour, and it’s made the majors more compelling,” Chamblee said on Golf Channel’s Live From set in July 2023.
“There should be more sting in defecting away from the PGA Tour. I can’t think of a better way to do that than make the Players Championship a major. It should have been a major eons ago, and I believe it is. But it should have that designation.”
The Players Championship has long had one of the strongest fields in golf and is contested annually at TPC Sawgrass in Ponta Vedra Beach, Florida, each spring.
Every year, pundits like Chamblee argue whether or not The Players should be considered a major championship.
But golf is a game played all over the world.
The United States already hosts three major championships, so why not follow tennis and add a major in the land down under?
“Australia is a sports-mad country. Golf is one of those sports we love!” said Luke Elvy, Australian broadcaster and journalist. “Like the rest of the world, participation in golf had been dwindling pre-Covid but has grown significantly since. The pandemic boom has been further boosted by Cameron Smith and Minjee Lee winning major championships in 2022.”
Golf in Australia has a long and rich history, with millions of Aussies playing the sport annually.
The land down under has also produced many world-class players, including many who have won some of the biggest championships in golf over the past few decades.
Smith, who hails from Brisbane, won the Claret Jug at St. Andrew’s in 2022. He fended off the likes of Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, and Cameron Young to win his first major championship. He is in this week’s Australian Open field, joined by 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, 2015 PGA Championship winner Jason Day, and perennial major contender Marc Leishman—all of whom have made an incredible mark on Australian golf. Other notable Aussies playing this week include Lucas Herbert, Min Woo Lee, and young up-and-comer Elvis Smilye, who won the Australian PGA Championship on Sunday. Last year’s winner, Chilean Joaquin Niemann, is also back to defend his title.
Adam Scott is perhaps the most popular Australian golfer of the 21st century, and his only major title came at Augusta National in 2013. But Scott, now 44, is not in this week’s Australian Open field, opting to rest and recuperate after a long, albeit successful 2024 campaign.
His absence does not diminish this week’s Australian Open, though. But professional golf has done just that for the better part of 30 years.
“Australia has contributed to golf’s ecosystem for over a century and will continue to do so,” Elvy added. “To disregard a nation with world-class players and courses is only to the detriment of the game’s leaders.”
Back in the day, Australia’s biggest tournament, the Australian Open, was a marquee event on the golf calendar, typically played in November or December—the peak of the Aussie summer.
Some of the game's biggest legends, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, and Greg Norman, have all won the Stonehaven Cup, the trophy given annually to the winner of the Australian Open.
“The Australian Open has over 100 years of history,” Elvy noted. “It was considered the ‘fifth major’ during the 1970s and 1980s when legendary businessman Kerry Packer bankrolled the field.”
But since the early 1990s, the Australian Open has lost its luster.
“I honestly don’t know, probably a lack of money,” Elvy said when asked why the PGA Tour has had no permanent presence in Australia. “The PGA Tour has hosted three President’s Cups in Australia—in 1998, 2011, and 2019—and is scheduled again in 2028. All of them have been overwhelming successes because Australians love world-class sports!”
While overlooking Australia, the PGA Tour has staged events in South Korea, Japan, China, Mexico, and Scotland in the 21st century.
South Korea, Japan, and China all rank among the top 12 biggest economies in the world, with the latter two joining the United States as having the three largest outputs of gross domestic product (GDP).
Plenty of commercial opportunities exist in each of these countries.
But those same prospects exist in Australia, the 13th largest economy and a country with one of the highest GDPs per capita.
Yet, the upper echelons of professional golf have let Australia go by the wayside.
Hence, Norman, the LIV Golf CEO, sensed an opportunity in 2023. The Saudi-backed tour staged a tournament in Adelaide—Australia’s fifth-largest city—and the event has become the biggest on the LIV Golf calendar. Roughly 94,000 fans flocked to The Grange Golf Club in Adelaide this past April, the second year LIV staged an event in Australia. The tournament has been so successful that the World Golf Awards listed LIV Golf Adelaide as its best golf event for the second consecutive year.
“Australians are starved of seeing world-class players regularly,” Elvy added.
“Greg Norman knew an event would be a huge success because he knows our passion for the game. Golf in Australia has been carried by the likes of Adam Scott, Cam Smith, and Marc Leishman over the last decade—and to a lesser extent Jason Day because he rarely returns.”
“Yes, we have had glimpses of greatness like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth, but we want to see the best of the best compete regularly. LIV brought the best field to Australia outside of those three Presidents Cups since the halcyon days of the 1970s and 1980s.”
In 2011, some of the best players in the world competed in the Australian Open, held the week before Royal Melbourne hosted the President’s Cup.
“When I was hosting Australian Open TV coverage, we had a star-studded field at the 2011 Australian Open,” Elvy reminisced. “I asked Tiger about the great list of champions on the Stonehaven Cup, and he said, ‘I want to get my name on that trophy.’ He finished third behind [Australian] Greg Chalmers that year, but the crowds were enormous!”
Woods never did win the Australian Open, but when McIlroy returned to the land down under in 2013, he emerged victorious.
Spieth then won in record fashion the following year.
“What an incredible honor to put my name on this trophy,” Spieth said after his Australian Open victory in 2014. “With these conditions, the golf course is very difficult. It’s definitely the best round I have ever played and the best win I have ever had.”
Spieth went on to win The Masters and the U.S. Open in 2015 and The Open in 2017.
He then won the Australian Open again in 2016.
McIlroy, Spieth, and the best players in the world should continue to play at the Australian Open each year, just as Nicklaus, Palmer, and Watson used to.
Should they travel to Australia annually, players will find some of the most passionate sports fans on the planet and discover some of the world’s best courses too.
The famed sand-belt region around Melbourne has five courses ranked among Golf Digest’s Top 100 in the world.
Royal Melbourne is perhaps the most famous of Australia’s courses, as it boasts the same architect who designed Augusta National: Alister MacKenzie.
Kingston Heath—host of this week’s Australian Open and the 2028 President’s Cup—Metropolitan Golf Club, Victoria Golf Club, and Peninsula Kingswood Country Club all have the pedigree to host the world’s best golfers on an annual basis.
Each of these courses sits within metropolitan Melbourne, one of Australia’s largest cities and one of the great cities in the entire world.
From a monetary standpoint, Melbourne has no shortage of corporate opportunities. The same can be said for Sydney, perhaps the most famous city in Australia.
Greater Sydney also has an impressive repertoire of golf courses, which include The Australian Golf Club, not far from world famous Bondi Beach. The Lakes Golf Club and New South Wales Golf Club, located around Sydney, have also hosted Australian Opens.
Plenty of courses can host this prestigious championship, similar to how the R&A has a designated ‘rota’ of clubs that host The Open each year. But now the golfing world has to endure a long period of time—nearly nine months—between The Masters and The Open each year.
The Australian Open would help fill that void in November, December, or early February—at whatever time best suits golf’s new professional world order. Since the PGA Tour agreed to do business with the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), this new governing body should work to grow the game of golf globally.
One way to do so is by making the Australian Open a major championship.
Get the best players in the world to compete for the Stonehaven Cup.
Heck, even Nicklaus referred to the Australian Open as a “fifth major” in a 2016 interview with Australian Golf Digest.
So to the powers that be, look at what LIV Golf has accomplished in Adelaide. The Australian Open could be much bigger, much grander than that event.
Aussies have been starved for decades; it is time to feed them with something they deserve: a major championship.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.