The mixed-gender Australian Open can have a diminished girls’s area and revert to a single-cut format on its return to Sydney this yr after the earlier occasion in Melbourne in December drew criticism over its convoluted construction.
The inaugural dual-gender match had an uncommon second lower after 54 holes, leaving the highest 30 gamers from every of the lads’s and ladies’s fields to compete for separate trophies within the ultimate spherical at Victoria Golf Club.
This yr’s occasion at The Australian and The Lakes golf golf equipment from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3 will see the ladies’s area trimmed to 84 gamers with the lads’s unchanged at 156, organisers mentioned on Wednesday.
The males’s area will probably be lower to 60 plus ties after 36 holes, with the ladies’s lower to a pro-rata 32 plus ties. The 54-hole second lower has been scrapped.
Organisers mentioned the modifications had been determined after a assessment of final yr’s tournaments in Melbourne and following session with each the lads’s and ladies’s tour our bodies and taking part in teams.
The head of the native girls’s golf tour mentioned the diminished girls’s area would guarantee a “high-quality competition” that mirrored the significance of the nationwide championship and assured gamers most world rating factors.
“The size of the women’s Open field will be reassessed year by year,” WPGA Tour of Australasia Chief Executive Officer Karen Lunn mentioned.
“Our aim is to grow the depth in the women’s game.”
Prize-money will stay equal throughout the lads’s and ladies’s tournaments, which will probably be performed over 4 days at The Australian Golf Club and co-hosted by The Lakes in the course of the first two days.
The males’s occasion will probably be co-sanctioned by Europe’s DP World Tour.
Poland’s Adrian Meronk claimed the lads’s title final yr, whereas South African Ashleigh Buhai received the ladies’s occasion.