10/08/2008 4:25 PM
Exclusive to Sportal and PGA
Rain took out much of the day for the leaders and they face what the great Ben Hogan did in 1951 – a 36-hole final day on a torturous course designed to extract the severest of tolls on the players.
Before the weather put a halt to the round, Andres Romero managed 65, clearly a brilliant round and one that recovered many of the mistakes of his Friday 78.
At only two-over-par he will watch from his hotel as the leaders tackle the morning round and it would be no surprise to see him in the lead after 54 holes.
Interesting was the pronouncement from Beijing from the Prime Minister suggesting that now Australia was an 'Olympic heavyweight', more money was needed to keep up with Britain, France, Italy and Germany.
"However Australia goes at these Olympics, he's (John Coates) proposing a national summit of the major sports to look at their plans for 2012 and 2016 ... and what further investment may be necessary from Government," the prime minister told us.
The truth is we're up against Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
These are countries which are three times, four times the size of Australia in terms of population, in terms of resources.
For us to remain ahead of the game, we are going to have to continue to take things to the next level - that's what Coatesy's on about and that's what the Government's on about.
Golf, of course, is not an Olympic sport and that means its funding is several levels below that of the Olympic sports.
It is also arguably our most successful mainstream sport worldwide if the measure is how many players we have amongst the best in the world.
Geoff Ogilvy and Adam Scott are both easily inside the top 10 players in the world and Stuart Appleby and Robert Allenby are inside the top thirty 30. There are more than a dozen inside the top 100.
It is a major sport by participation, by its influence and contribution to the economy and by the success of our best practitioners.
The best players need no funding and there is a good argument to be made that they should contribute something back into the institutes like the Victorian Institute of Sport program that gave them the skills to achieve what they have.
However, there is a generation coming behind who are surely entitled to the same levels of funding as those playing obscure sports that just happen to be a part of the Olympics.
Many of our best players - Ogilvy, Appleby, Allenby, Aaron Baddeley, Richard Green, Jarrod Lyle and Steve Allan - came out of the Victorian Institute and the real credit goes to the two main coaching influences, Steve Bann and Dale Lynch.
They have influenced a new generation of coaches but both, for obvious financial reasons, work privately with professional players.
Bann, who still works with Appleby, has had much to do with the brilliant recent play of Korean K.J Choi, and Lynch is employed by, amongst others, Ogilvy, Allan and Mat Goggin.
In my opinion they are two of the best half dozen coaches in the world but they have been lost to the system because of the reality they are entitled to, and need to, make more money than a state-based coach of junior players.
The other coaches inside the best half dozen in the world are