December 8: Australian golfing great Greg Norman has given his full support to the new OneAsia Tour, describing it as a ‘logical step' and a ‘great opportunity’.
The 54 year old attended last week’s Australian Open, which was the penultimate event on this year’s OneAsia Tour, and spoke with enthusiasm about the new circuit.
The Tour was inaugurated this year by the China Golf Association, the PGA of Australia, the Korean Golf Association and the Korean Golf Tour.
Its objective is to build a Tour in the Asia-Pacific region that can match the lucrative circuits in the United States and Europe.
Norman said: “That is a logical step. Asia has really got to be the place to be. From what I see in the United States, the women are being dominated by Asians. So the media interest with that flows back. Y.E Yang winning the PGA championship automatically flows back.”
The Australian has won two British Opens and five Australian Opens but it has been his success in the business world, and in particular golf course design, that has allowed him to see the huge potential that Asia holds.
“There are places in China like Hainan island, where they want to get more global exposure and attract tourists so as you start looking forward, in 10 to 15 years’ time, you can see how Asia is really going to start to put together a pretty good format of tournaments. They have to date but they can really expand out to something like 12 to 20 tournaments and it is never going to conflict with the United States. So I think it is a tremendous opportunity,” added Norman.
This year the OneAsia schedule features five tournaments, while it will offer at least 11 events next season - each with a purse of at least US$1 million.
Norman’s great friend Adam Scott recorded a popular victory in the Australian Open at New South Wales Golf Club.
He feels that it will not be long before places like China and Korea will start producing players of the calibre of Scott.
“You know they're going to start producing some great players because athletically they have a great history of producing great athletes, no matter what they put their mind to. You can see China is going to start producing some great players, Korea is doing that, so is Japan with Ryo Ishikawa,” said Norman.
“You can see why OneAsia, or something happening in this part of the world, is so logical and it's starting to develop right now and I think that's great,” he added.
The final event of the OneAsia season is this week’s US$1.2 million Australian PGA Championship presented by Coca-Cola, which will be held at the Hyatt Regency Coolum on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
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