Only Aaron Baddeley’s four-hole dramatic playoff with Daniel Chopra in the Huntingdale twilight on Sunday saved the Australian Masters – sorry, Mastercard Australian Masters – from being a total and utter schemozzle.

From the time Australia’s best two players, world No.6 Adam Scott and No.13 Geoff Ogilvy, decided not play the Masters, and Europe’s lone contestant in the top 100, Thomas Bjorn, made a mercy dash back home to Denmark early last week, the tournament began to develop a whiff of death about it. So light on for talent were the organizers, and so desperate were they to fill the numbers in the field, that once-handy Australian pros such as Mike Clayton and Mike Harwood – whose glory days came almost a generation ago – were asked to dust off their clubs.

Little wonder then that major sponsor Mastercard, which tips in several hundred thousand dollars each year to support the tournament, was feeling a bit short-changed. It was getting very little bang for its buck, and was starting to make noises. The newspapers were not playing ball either, referring to the tournament sans corporate prefix. Mastercard is now talking about withdrawing its money, saying there is very little upside in its involvement.

Channel Seven desperately tried to make up lost ground on Sunday by plugging Mastercard endlessly, even getting Pat Welsh to conduct an interview with the Mastercard supremo as well as Mastercard’s “roving ambassador” Ian Baker-Finch – both wearing matching Mastercard-logo’d shirts and caps – in front of a whopping Mastercard billboard. As advertorials go, it took some beating.

Seven, however, completely stuffed up the PR exercise by pulling the plug on its coverage half-way through the playoff and going to the news. In a trice, it had revealed its priorities.

The Australasian PGA Tour has been desperately trying to keep its head above water for almost a decade now. The sad truth is that it is drowning.

Oh, for the days when the Australian Open was won routinely by Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player and was known as the fifth major.

Even in 1986, the year Greg Norman led every major championship into the final round and was clearly the world’s best player, the Queenslander also found time to return home and support the local tour. And not just support the tour, but compete hard in it. That summer, Norman won the Queensland Open, New South Wales Open, Western Australian Open and, for good measure, the South Australian Open – four more miniscule events in world terms it would be hard to find. The rough equivalent these days would be Tiger Woods finishing his season then competing in the Rhode Island Open, the Alaska Classic, the Oregon Hooters Invitational and the Idaho Masters.

If, as expected, Mastercard pulls the plug on their Masters sponsorship, questions ought to be asked of Scott and Ogilvy, who have both shunned this event for two years in a row (Ogilvy last year, because his wife was due with their first child). Yet – and here’s the rub – Scott, who has competed in Japan and Singapore already this month, and Ogilvy will both be playing in South Africa this week, for the Nedbank Challenge which carries prizemoney of $5 million. The purse at Huntingdale last week was $1.5million.

If you were cynical, you might be tempted to think Ogilvy and Scott were greedy mercenaries, prepared to sell out the tour that spawned them in chasing even more filthy lucre. But only if you were cynical.