NZ golf announces event time changes

New Zealand's two premier professional golf tournaments - both on the Australasian PGA Tour - may be staged back to back next year as a scheduling squeeze impacts on the New Zealand Open.

Officials announced that no New Zealand Open will be held in 2008, with the event originally slated for late November-early December being pushed back until next March at The Hills near Queenstown.

The 2009 New Zealand PGA Championship is also being held next March in Christchurch.

New Zealand Golf chief executive Bill MacGowan acknowledged one possible option was to hold the two events in successive weeks.

This will likely see a change in co-sanctioning status for the New Zealand Open, which has also been part of an expanding European Tour for the past three years.

The NZ PGA Championship is an established stop on the Nationwide Tour, the second tier circuit in the United States which has ventured to New Zealand and Australia since 2002.

The Open has been shunted around the calendar in recent times, moving from early summer to late summer slots in 2006 and 2007 since the European connection was first made.

MacGowan said the status of the Open was still on the negotiating table.

"It is an option," he said of linking with the Nationwide Tour.

If that transpired it would mean a significant cut in the Open prize money, which last year totalled $NZ1.5 million ($A1.21 million).

The PGA Championship, by comparison, offered a purse of $US650,000 ($A675,675).

"To be fair everything is an option at this stage. The only certainty is that the New Zealand Open will be at The Hills for the next two years," MacGowan said.

"Apart from that everything else is up for grabs, including the purse. What the purse needs to be is dependent on what tour you end up with."

MacGowan said officials were conscious of the need to add some certainty to the Open scheduling.

"We want to get a week where we don't clash with anything so we get the players and we want to lock in a week for the next two years.

"We keep changing the dates and people get annoyed with us, and I can understand that."

The original plan was to play this year's championship in the same late November-early December window as in 2007.

However, he said a suitable date before Christmas was not available, due to the busy international calendar and increasing competition from tournaments, particularly in Asia.

"We are currently negotiating with key parties on the final dates and sanctioning agreements in relation to the championship," MacGowan said.