This being December it is no surprise that most of the notable golf tournaments going on around the world are taking place in the southern hemisphere, sometimes co-sanctioned by the DP World/European Tour. Two such of these concluded on Sunday: the Crown Australian Open at Royal Melbourne, assuredly one of the world’s greatest golf courses, and the Nedbank Golf Challenge at the Gary Player Country Club in Sun City, South Africa, itself a fine layout. Two Scandinavian golfers came up trumps.
Down under, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen from Denmark edged out the 2022 Open champion and local favourite, Cameron Smith. Ultimately, the decisive difference was that the Dane got up-and-down to save his par at the last whereas Smith could only manage a bogey. Among other rewards for the winner will be a place in the field at Augusta National next spring. Among other golfers in his wake last week was the reigning Masters champion, Rory McIlroy, eight shots adrift in a tie for 14th. This was Neergaard-Petersen’s first triumph on the DP World Tour. He simply said: “I’m really at a loss for words.”
Heading west across the Indian Ocean to Sun City, the outcome saw Norway’s Kristoffer Reitan also prevail by a shot, in his case from another home favourite, Jayden Schaper, and Dan Bradbury from England. As with the celebrations in Australia, Reitan sounded similarly nonplussed after securing his second DP World Tour title. “I don’t know what I’m feeling right now,” he said. This year’s tournament, incidentally, was officially staged in honour of the course’s designer, Gary Player, the South African who won nine major championships and turned 90 last month.
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One thing struck me ahead of the off in the two events: the comparative prize money. In Melbourne the purse was Aud$2 million. That’s about £1 million. At Sun City it was US$6 million, around £4.5 million. That’s quite a discrepancy. Neergaard-Petersen received just over Aud$193,000 on Sunday. That’s about a third more than the entire purse when Bill Rogers won the Australian Open in 1981. (I’ll get to the reason for that comparison in a moment.) Reitan’s prize was US$1,025 million.
The inaugural Sun City Challenge – as the tournament was then styled, played over the same course – began on New Year’s Eve, 1981. The purse was US$1 million. There were only five competitors: in the order of finishing, Johnny Miller, Seve Ballesteros, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Player. Miller collected the US$500,000 winner’s prize after a playoff with Ballesteros that lasted nine holes and, obviously, went into 1982. At least Miller had a good line about winning that much money after such a protracted playoff. “Doing it that way,” he said, “was pretty close to earning it.”
That prize fund was truly colossal for its time. The US Open purse in 1981 was $346,730. Yes, you read that right. David Graham’s victory cheque was for $55,000. This year’s purse was $21.5 million; J.J. Spaun took home $4.3 million. Trust me, that’s not solely down to inflation.
You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com as well as his golf archive on robertgreen-golf.com
