GOLF PRIZE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 637, 15 September 1933, Page 2

GOLF PRIZE

BIG INBUCEMENTS FOR COMING MELBOURNE CELEBRATION. £2000 OFFERED. .... Melbourne, Sept. 2. The Victorian Golf Association is olfering a prize of £2000 for a championship meeting at the Metropolitan Golf Club, Oakleigh, Victoria, as a feature of Victorian and Melbourne centenary celebrations. In addition, there will be a valuable gold cup for the Victorian amateur open event. Mr. H. G. McRoberts, president of the Victorian Golf Association, says that the £2000 prize is the biggest golf prize in the British Empire. The Daily Mail (Eng) prize is £150. He said there should ultimately be £5000 offered in prize money in Victoria alone. Already another club proposes to offer a Centenary Gold Cup and a substantial prize, and still a third club is negotigting for a competition for which £250 prize money will be available. Negotiations are at present being finalised to ensure that at least one of the world's leading golfers will b'e present in Australia during the centenary and leading professionals from other countries coming to Melbourne for the centenary will find a most remunerative "gate" throughout Australia, wh'ere there are 120,000 golfers, for private exhibitions. Around Melbourne there are at least five picturesque golf courses which are definitely of championship standard and have been described by overseas visitors as the equal of anything to be found in Britain or Am'erica. Mr. Walter Hagen, for instance, in speaking of the Metropolitan links, Melbourne, said: "I am greatly surprised. I did not expect to find ahything outside Britain or America as beautiful and as well turfed or with as much golfing point as the Metropolitan proved to me," and in regard to golf geherally in the State of Victoria, he remarked' that he was "surprised at the quality of the holes, the type of golf country, * and the golf architecture."