Royal Pines v Royal Queensland: Battle to host Australian PGA
As negotiations begin between Royal Queensland Golf Club and Royal Pines over who hosts next year’s Australian PGA, the famous Brisbane club is holding an early ace, writes JIM TUCKER.
Golf
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The battle “Royal” to host next year’s Australian PGA is a maze of sensitive negotiations yet there is just one obvious decision to make.
Australian golf’s schedule of big tournaments may have shrunk to just two each summer but the game in this country will always have a rich heritage to celebrate.
It is that heritage that must be trumpeted far and wide from Royal Queensland Golf Club when the famous riverside club toasts its Centenary Year in 2020.
It’s the club where a long-haired Greg Norman was a trainee in the 1970s and the great Arnold Palmer once dropped in by helicopter in 1963 to play a fourball matchplay exhibition match with borrowed clubs.
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Palmer won his only Australian Open on the same fairways along the Brisbane River three years later and black-and-white photos proudly adorn RQ’s clubhouse walls. History.
Such a 2020 vote for RQ would be no slight on RACV Royal Pines because it’s hard to think of a stronger tournament backer in Australia over the event’s seven-year run on the Gold Coast.
More than just the slick $11 million-plus upgrade of the golf course, the resort has one of the best function rooms in Queensland which was the perfect setting for the gala Greg Norman Medal night for 440 people last week.
RACV have put in an elite gym too and Royal Pines has rolled wonderfully off the Gold Coast hosting last year’s Commonwealth Games.
AFL clubs Carlton and Richmond have had camps there, the Chinese women’s football squad based themselves at Royal Pines and cricket’s Brisbane Heat and Melbourne Stars lapped up the location before last Friday night’s Big Bash clash at neighbouring Metricon Stadium.
A one-off visit to Royal Queensland and back to Royal Pines in 2021?
It makes perfect sense just as the Australian Open detour from Sydney courses to Kingston Heath (2020) and Victoria (2022) on Melbourne’s sandbelt share the tournament and keep it fresh.
Since Adam Scott and Rachel Hetherington played a fun round together to christen the redesign of RQ in 2007, the course has bedded down extremely well.
Since then a championship tee has been built on the par four 14th to add 35-40m to the hole to beef it up for the moment it did host a big tournament.
Extra tweaks elsewhere have RQ ready to host a major event for the first time since Robert Allenby won the PGA there in 2000-01.
You can understand Gold Coast deputy mayor Donna Gates fighting as hard as she is to keep the PGA on the Gold Coast but sometimes a one-off “loan” to another club is just right.
Originally published as Royal Pines v Royal Queensland: Battle to host Australian PGA