Tiger Woods to Play in Aussie Masters for $3 Million

It has been 11 years since Tiger Woods has played in the Land Down Under in the 1998 Australian-hosted President's Cup.  This fall, he will return to Australia to play in the Australian Masters.  The Austrlian government, which supplies financial support to the tournament, announced the confirmation yesterday along with Woods' appearance fee of $3 million USD.

That $3 million is expected to generated over four times that in economic impact in the region near host course Kingston Heath in November.  The Australian taxpayers are on the hook for about half of the appearance fee because of the government support for the event.

Woods has previously played in two Australian stroke play events - the 1996 Australian Open where he lost to Greg Norman by a dozen and the 1997 Australian Masters where he lost to Peter Lonard by seven.

Woods is clearly a different player now.

Despite some rousing support from Australian golf officials and Stuart Appleby, the five time British Open champion Peter Thomson is convinced that Woods' appearance at the Masters will negatively impact sponsorship for the Australian Open.

From Doug Ferguson's AP report:

“In my view it’s going to do a lot of damage to our national Open which comes two weeks after this one in Melbourne,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “The Australian Open is our national championship, it is the most important event that we have.  He won’t be playing in that but that (Masters appearance) sucks up all the potential sponsorship.”

Regardless, with the investment made, it appears that Australian golf will see a serious boon this fall.