Too much golf on TV, says Baker-Finch

A "monotonous" overdose of television coverage is turning golf fans off the sport, according to former British Open champion Ian Baker-Finch.

Baker-Finch, who has been working as a high-profile television commentator on the US PGA Tour for eight years, called for golf broadcasting in Australia to be slashed to lure back support.

He was speaking on the eve of the Australian Masters, which begins at Huntingdale on Thursday.

Baker-Finch also rejected any moves to stage the Australian Open permanently in one major city, saying it should be regularly rotated.

But he is convinced the game here needs some changes despite having one of the world's best junior programs, easy public access to courses and a cluster of players in the world's top 20 rankings.

"I'd like to see less golf on television," Baker-Finch said.

"Six hours a day is ridiculous... (there should be) two or three hours Thursday and Friday and three hours Saturday and Sunday and really make a whizz-bang, you-beaut show out of it rather than a monotonous six hours.

"It's too much, people turn the sound down and have it in the background and watch the birds chirp in the trees and pretty colours.

"I'd rather see a shorter, punchier package, that would be good," he said.

"One of the biggest problems is we used to come back here from around the world in October and (Australians) hadn't seen any golf apart from the British Open or maybe the (US) Masters all year.

"People were excited about it, television was a big deal.

"Now you watch golf day in, day out, you've got the golf channel (pay TV), you've got every frigging golf tournament in the world on tv.

"People watch me on tv 30 weeks a year over there," he said.

"It's hard to sustain a high-profile tour (here) because people have pretty much had enough of watching all that golf all year."

Players and organisers appear split over whether to stage the Australian Open in one major capital in a multi-year deal or share it around the states - which is Baker-Finch's preference.

"I wouldn't put it in one city, I'd put it in Sydney and Melbourne and every 10 years I'd take it to Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane and maybe Hobart," he said.

"Six or seven years of that 10 it should be Sydney or Melbourne," he said.

Baker-Finch believes Australian tournaments no longer need marquee overseas names to attract interest - but they do need more prizemoney.

"I do believe we'll raise the bigger tournaments up ... maybe we'll get the Australian Open, Masters and PGA up to three, four or five million dollars," he said.

"At the moment the players on the secondary tour in the US are playing for the same amount of money we are on the big tour.

"And I think we've got the field ... maybe we get Ernie (Els) back and we have Adam (Scott) play all of them but we don't have to hang our hat anymore on a headliner because we've got 20 players in the top 125 in the world."