Govt ploughing ahead with $45 million golf course upgrade
The Premier says a major new open golf event will be held at the North Adelaide course flagged for a controversial upgrade, revealing the details with the Golf Australia chief today.
The men and women’s Australian Open golf championships will be hosted at the redeveloped North Adelaide Golf Course from 2028, the Premier announced today.
It comes a week after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) told players and staff it would stop funding the multi-billion-dollar LIV Golf circuit that was due to be played on the upgraded park lands course, leaving the competition’s future up in the air.
The new deal would give the city site hosting rights for three opens for both the men and women’s codes from 2028 to 2034, with the Premier making the announcement at a press conference with Golf Australia CEO James Sutherland and Adelaide member Lucy Hood on Thursday afternoon.
Malinauskas said the government reached a long-term deal with Golf Australia that would see a newly upgraded championship-standard course at the North Adelaide Public Golf Course play host to an Australian Open every year from 2028 to 2034, including three men’s and three women’s Opens.
The cost of the deal was not revealed, the Premier saying it was commercially confidential, but that the negotiations had been ongoing for “some time”.
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The first men’s Australian Open at North Adelaide will be staged in 2028 and will be just the third time the major event has been hosted outside New South Wales or Victoria in more than half a century.
“Central to this move is the investment we are delivering in North Adelaide, a world-class public golf course uniquely located in our stunning Park Lands overlooking the CBD,” Malinauskas said.
“Whether they are playing golf, walking or cycling through it, South Australians will have the benefit of enjoying this high-quality course for the vast majority of the year.”
The tournament has been hosted in Adelaide once before in 1998, and it’s return would be the second time it has been held outside of Victoria or New South Wales.
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The news comes after a local action group held a vigil for the 585 trees facing the chop in the $45 million taxpayer-funded golf course redevelopment, and after calls from the Greens in state parliament’s upper house to revert funding from the golf course upgrade to provide free public transport amid the fuel crisis.
Adelaide first hosted LIV Golf in 2023, with the state government investing heavily in its future including starting preliminary works on North Adelaide Golf Course redevelopment in its bid to grow the event in the state.
The Premier has said for each tree that is removed, three trees would be planted and that the course was a community facility, benefiting the entire state.
“The LIV Golf event has been a huge success, more than anyone could have ever hoped for or predicted but now we take it to a whole new level with the most prestigious golf events in the country regularly calling South Australia home,” Malinauskas said.
Adelaide City Councillor Keiran Snape said he was “shocked” that the upgrade to the North Adelaide course would go ahead, instead suggesting a Lockleys private course to host the Australian Open tournament.
“There is a world class golf course just down the road at Kooyonga, why not use that for the tournaments rather than the removal of almost 600 mature trees,” Snape said.
“The environmental impact and destruction to native habitat this redevelopment will bring is huge.”
Kooyonga was announced as the host of the 2027 LIV Golf tournament in October last year.
The Saudis announced it would pull the plug on funding LIV after investing $8.5 billion into the tournament, and up until last Thursday Premier Peter Malinauskas said communications from LIV were “they very much intend to be here next year”.
The Premier said previously his government would need to know by October 2026 at the latest if there would be impacts to the 2027 Adelaide event.
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