Heard a very good thing on a podcast the other day – by which I mean a very good thing because I agree with it – that the men’s Australian Open should be moved to February and sit either side of LIV Adelaide.

It was Mark Allen on the Talk Birdie To Me podcast, the one he does with Nick O’Hern, and the gist of it was that the men’s Australian Open would benefit from a move to February because it’s a better date for DP World Tour players to come Down Under, and because it would piggy-back off LIV Adelaide.

“Piggy-back”? He didn’t say “piggy-back”, for our famous national open championship won by Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and rockin’ Ryggs Johnston of Libby, Montana, is a magnificent standalone event in its own right.

The very idea. But both tournies could certainly complement one another. 

Because, fact is, sports fans, the Australian Open – in this case talking the men’s – has lost a little lustre the last couple of years. Adam Scott didn’t turn up and nor did Jason Day, preferring to spend the week having a rest before chopping it around in Tiger’s 20-man invitational thing in the Bahamas.

For mine – and Mark’s and Adam’s and one would posit Jason’s, too – the dual-gender format, in which two Australian Opens run at the same time is on the nose because of the timing, and that it takes the gloss of both, and a few other things.

Sponsors and television, though – call them The Money, and the holders of the greatest stakes – like it how it is, dual gender, presumably because they can pay less for more stuff.

Golf Australia, the governing body, instituted the dual-gender experiment because the Australian Women’s Open had been hemorraging cash and then Covid happened and there was opportunity in crisis.

It wasn’t that company selling fans’ heads on mannequins at empty footy grounds, but they were having a crack.

Others who like two Australian Opens going on at the same time – and I’m in this category, in this instance – point to the fact you can sit on a hole and watch great men’s players followed by great women.

So there are benefits.

But, overall, reading the room, interpreting the greater hive-mind of our mighty continent of sports-loving couch-fanciers, the sentiment is largely against the Opens being dual gender, and that it was a good and bold idea that doesn’t work anymore for manifold reasons.

Hold the Australian Open at Royal Melbourne on a week either side of LIV Adelaide, and Brooks Koepka would play, wouldn’t he? PHOTO: Getty Images.

And now, as so many players in John Huggan’s cracking yarn declared, it’s time to “make the Australian Open great again” by separating men’s and women’s tournaments, and pumping tyres otherwise.

And the answer is, as Mark and I and so many agree: February.

Hold the Australian Open in February and you’ll benefit from the appearance of LIV Golf stars eager to accrue World Ranking Points and potential starts in the Open Championship and elsewhere, as Joaquin Niemann did last year and Marc Leishman did this one.

And if they don’t give a stuff about the points – there appear to be no flies on Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, for instance – they could be prevailed upon to play anyway by simple dint of them being in the country.

Warm-up here, big boys. Get your name on that trophy. And did we tell you it’s at Royal Melbourne?

A women’s Open moving to February appears a no-brainer because Minjee Lee and Hannah Green would be arriving with more than a few hours jet-lagged sleep after the season-ending LPGA championship in Florida, and they could bring the game’s best players with them.

A promoter could surely sell Nelly Korda, Lydia Ko, Lilia Vu, Charley Hull and Rose Zhang – to name a few – taking on our Aussie stars on our own patch.

Do that on Kingston Heath, all the better. And if it needs to be co-sanctioned by the LPGA, so do that. Why can’t we do that? Is it impossible to do that? 

Star power: Lydia Ko, Jin Young Ko, Brooke Henderson, Minjee Lee and Nelly Korda launch the HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa GC in Singapore. They couldn’t sell an Australian Open thus? PHOTO: Getty Images

Hell, maybe move the PGA Championship to February, too, and make February the new black I mean November. There could still be Australasian PGA Tour events from October through November and into January in which the young bucks and wannabes amass order of merit points.

But if horse racing owns October, tennis owns January, and cricket’s just the wallpaper of summer, then the glorious game of golf could have four mighty events in the month of February in Australia, being the Australian women’s Open, the Australian Open, the PGA Championship and LIV Adelaide.

Order them as you see fit, project managers.

Golf Australia chief James Sutherland said it’s more complicated than just moving the tournaments and splitting them. And of course it is. And it’s easy for columnists and podcasters and your mates in the back bar at the club to take pot shots and toss up “solutions” for Australia’s Summer of Golf.

But there’s nothing set in stone, as Mr Sutherland said. They have a clean slate. And, surely, in concert with Gav Kirkman’s PGA, these chaps could sell the benefits of February and standalone Australian Opens to sponsors, television and mysterious Japanese philanthropists.