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Australia is the place where this week begins a year of golf full of new innovative formats aimed at popularizing the sport. The appointment is at the Oates Vic Open, official tournament of the women\u2019s circuits of Europe, Australasia and Australia. According to its organizers, this is \u201cthe only golf tournament of its kind in the world in which men and women compete on the same courses at the same time with the same prize money. The combined purse will be $1.3 million, which means that the men and women will battle it out at Barwon Heads for a share of $650,000. <\/p>\n
The Vic Open will be followed next week by the ISPS HANDA World Super 6 Perth at Lake Karrinyup Country Club (Australia), the second edition of an event sanctioned by the three aforementioned professional women\u2019s circuits and featuring a six-hole competition on the final day.<\/p>\n
Preparing for this week\u2019s \u201cmixed\u201d tournament, Matthew Griffin, winner of the men\u2019s event in 2014, said it was one of the highlights of his schedule, and not just because he\u2019s returning as a former champion. \u201cThere\u2019s a really nice feeling about the whole tournament. You get to see a lot of old friends on the women\u2019s side that you haven\u2019t seen in a long time and obviously it\u2019s always great to come back to a place where you\u2019ve won before. They (Golf Victoria) did a great job in organizing the tournament, which gets better every year.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of the tournament is to get more people to play and, if this type of event attracts more people through participation and sponsorship, it\u2019s definitely a win for us as players because it obviously means we\u2019re playing for a bigger prize, like this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defending women\u2019s champion Mel Reid, a six-time winner on the Ladies European Tour, LET, said the similar prize money for men and women was not only good for the tournament, but also for women\u2019s golf in general. \u201cI think it\u2019s great. I think that\u2019s the way golf would have to go. There\u2019s a lot of talk about equality around the world and the prize money for the guys is obviously a lot more on the PGA Tour than it is on the LPGA Tour. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t find it very acceptable, so it\u2019s good to have a tournament where it\u2019s equal. It\u2019s great for the girls and great publicity for us. I hope the guys enjoy us as well. For me, there should be a lot more tournaments like this where it\u2019s the same. I think it would be great for golf.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hannah Green, who began her first full season on the LPGA Tour at the Pure Silk-Bahamas LPGA Classic last week, finishing tied for 11th, made a hasty trip from the Bahamas to Barwon Heads to play. \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty special event, I think, for both men and women to play. My boyfriend Jarryd (Felton) plays as well, and that\u2019s also a factor when it comes back to me and it\u2019s a great course and a great venue \u2013 we\u2019re very fortunate.\u201d <\/p>\n
Felton, a two-time winner on the ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia, and Green are hoping to replicate Richard Green and Marianne Skarpnord\u2019s famous victory at the 2015 Oates Vic Open when this engaged pair won their respective tournaments.<\/p>\n
Green and Felton last played a professional tournament against each other at last year\u2019s Nexus Risk TSA Group WA Open. \u201cI\u2019ll be traveling a lot this year and so will Jarryd,\u201d Green said, \u201cso we won\u2019t cross paths a lot. Being able to play any tournament on the same course is great. Two years ago the prize money was very different, and that\u2019s getting better and better. Obviously, the prize money is a factor in coming and playing as well, but it\u2019s also a great tournament and it\u2019s nice to see the growing interest in it.\u201d <\/p>\n
(Photos courtesy of PGA of Australia)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia is the place where this week begins a year of golf full of new innovative formats aimed at popularizing the sport. The appointment is at the Oates Vic Open, official tournament of the women\u2019s circuits of Europe, Australasia and Australia. According to its organizers, this is \u201cthe only golf tournament of its kind in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}