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As the dust settles on the U.S. Presidents Cup team narrowly avoiding disaster in Chicago, operations are already well underway for the next international edition of the biennial golf event in 2028 that will bring a major first.
Tennis Australia, the organization behind the Australian Open, will operate the majority of logistics for the 2028 Presidents Cup at iconic Kingston Heath Golf Club in Melbourne—including ticket sales, hospitality, retail, concessions, and sponsorships.
The PGA Tour, which owns and runs the Presidents Cup pitting U.S. golfers against players from international countries outside Europe, has never previously outsourced those operations to this scale, despite all of its infrastructure being U.S.-based.
“We are so far removed from that when we go over there,” 2028 Presidents Cup executive director Joe Tomek told Front Office Sports last week at Medinah Country Club. “To truly take advantage of that opportunity, we thought it was more efficient to find someone and a partner who already has that built-in infrastructure, staff, vendor resources, and credibility.”
Tomek, formerly the tournament director of the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, relocated to Melbourne this year, and was at last week’s Presidents Cup with a contingent of executives from Tennis Australia and the Visit Victoria tourism arm. The 2028 Presidents Cup will be the first project of Tennis Australia’s newly established events enterprise.
The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of the tennis calendar, is widely regarded as one of the best-run and most popular events in sports. More than 300,000 fans attended this year’s tournament in Melbourne across three weeks, and the United States Tennis Association hired former Tennis Australia CEO Craig Tiley to lead the organization and the U.S. Open.
Kingston Heath’s footprint and the Presidents Cup’s four-day competition won’t allow it to welcome that many fans—the 2019 Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne drew an attendance of 120,000—but Tennis Australia says the event should be able produce Australian Open-like demand from the country’s sports fans. “In terms of synergy between two big sporting events, this is about as close as you can imagine,” Tennis Australia director of partnerships and international business Roddy Campbell told FOS.
The 2028 Presidents Cup will be played in late November or early December, likely directly before or after golf’s Australian Open—the premier event run by Golf Australia that will be getting boosted prize money (and likely an elevated field of players) starting next year thanks to a new partnership with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour. In 2028, it will be played in Adelaide.
That all could line up for a huge U.S. vs International showcase as the latter looks to win the competition for the first time since 1998, also hosted in Melbourne. “The number one goal on my objectives and task from PGA Tour headquarters is the 2028 Presidents Cup will be the largest international event we’ve ever run,” Tomek said.
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