For decades, Australian golf revolved around Melbourne and Sydney. Now, a new power centre is emerging. From LIV crowds to bold course projects and political ambition, Adelaide is rapidly reshaping the game’s national landscape.
For most of the modern era, Australian golf has operated under a fairly settled pecking order.
Melbourne was the cathedral. Sydney, the wealthy cousin with harbour views and expensive memberships to match.
The rest of the country largely made do with occasional visits and polite acknowledgement.
South Australia, historically, was somewhere in the outer suburbs of that conversation, but not anymore.
In fact, if you were drawing the new map of Australian golf right now, the compass needle would be pointing directly at Adelaide, and it’s increasingly difficult to argue otherwise.
The most obvious catalyst is LIV Golf Adelaide, which arrived amid equal parts curiosity and scepticism and promptly blew the doors off what a golf tournament in this country was supposed to look like.
Record crowds. Global television coverage. A par-3 hole that became something resembling a European football terrace with grass. Whatever your feelings about the politics of LIV, the event itself became a phenomenon almost overnight.
And the rest of the world noticed.
More importantly, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas sensed rival state governments circling and moved quickly enough to lock the event into a long-term extension before anyone else could even sharpen their pencils.
Meanwhile, Malinauskas has developed something of a sporting hobby: pinching major events from rival states. Even Victoria’s MotoGP didn’t escape his wandering eye.
The Women’s Australian Open is another case in point. For years, the championship wandered the calendar looking slightly unloved, shuffled between cities, and recently squeezed into awkward scheduling gaps while sharing the spotlight with the men.
In Adelaide, it has once again been allowed to breathe as a standalone event, drawing strong crowds and a level of local engagement Melbourne and Sydney somehow never quite managed to manufacture.
None of this is to suggest Melbourne’s Sandbelt is any less iconic, or that Sydney’s championship courses are even remotely diminished. Tradition still lives comfortably in those cities, but momentum appears to be drifting west.
And the real intrigue lies just over the horizon.
The planned redevelopment of North Adelaide Golf Course could deliver something Australia has rarely possessed: a genuinely world-class public course perched on the edge of a capital city CBD. If done properly, (and the emphasis belongs on "if") it becomes both a showpiece tournament venue and a must-play stop for travelling golfers.
Further afield, The Cliffs at Kangaroo Island promises to add a bucket-list destination course to the state’s growing portfolio, neatly complementing established standouts like Mount Compass and Links Lady Bay, both top-100 courses which make handy stopovers on the journey.
Then there’s Glenelg Golf Club, the fourth Beatle on Adelaide’s sandbelt, whose sweeping redesign by Neil Crafter has emboldened the club to think far bigger about its place on the national landscape. Hosting this year’s elite amateur Interstate Series feels less like a final destination and more like a polite announcement of intent.
And will Malinauskas, whose relationship with Golf Australia CEO James Sutherland has flourished, continue his audacious push to bring the men’s Australian Open to South Australia?
For decades, Australian golf’s centre of gravity sat firmly elsewhere. These days, the sport is booming again, and other governments will inevitably continue to eye off tournaments they’d quite like to call their own, particularly as women’s golf continues its surge in popularity.
They’ll just need to be quick. Peter Malinauskas is already shopping.
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