{"id":853253,"date":"2026-08-13T02:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T02:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853253\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T02:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T02:14:11","slug":"blitz-golf-news-2026-what-is-it-australia-league-run-by-adelaide-businessman-simon-zybek-rivals-liv-golf-and-t20-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853253\/","title":{"rendered":"Blitz Golf news 2026, what is it, Australia league run by Adelaide businessman Simon Zybek, rivals LIV Golf and T20 cricket"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Adelaide businessman is at the forefront of a radical new golf<\/a> league he says can do what LIV<\/a> promised, but couldn\u2019t deliver.<\/p>\n

Simon Zybek is the CEO and founder of Blitz Golf, which he says is effectively the sport\u2019s version of Twenty20 cricket<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Aussie cricketer Glenn Maxwell competes at a Blitz Golf event.\u00a0Blitz Golf<\/p>\n

Professional tournament golf is played over four days, with upwards of 160 players in a field and a winner decided at the end.<\/p>\n

Blitz Golf is condensed into a three-hour window, with an initial field of 24 players consisting of professionals, amateurs, celebrities, and even fans who can win their way into a tournament.<\/p>\n

Those 24 play a six-hole round, with the top 12 advancing to round two. If there are ties on the cut line, those players go into a nearest-the-pin shootout to decide who advances.<\/p>\n

The 12 players then compete over three holes, with the top four at the end of that advancing to round three. The four players left standing then play one hole repeatedly until a winner is crowned, walking away with all the prize money. Veteran Aussie pro Wade Ormsby last year took out the Adelaide event and pocketed $10,000 for an afternoon\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Aussie cricketers like Glenn Maxwell<\/a> and Travis Head<\/a> have competed in Blitz Golf events, while Adelaide Crows<\/a> captain Jordan Dawson made the final of a tournament last year.<\/p>\n

Other \u201ccelebrities\u201d to compete include social media influencers, and Blitz has amassed a significant viewership on YouTube.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s short enough that celebrities can beat the pros,\u201d Zybek told nine.com.au.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the pros are better over 18 holes… this format with the resetting of scores, celebrities have matched it with pros the last few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be too long before a celebrity wins an event because it\u2019s geared up for them to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zybek\u2019s sporting background is in basketball, and he runs a project management business in the South Australian capital.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t interested in golf until he began sponsoring a young Aussie player and attended the Australian Open in Sydney several years ago, where he realised there was a \u201cgap in the market\u201d for a short format of the sport.<\/p>\n

The controversial LIV Golf has attempted to cash in on the same concept, with three-day tournaments rather than four-day, and monstrous prize money on offer thanks to back by the rich Saudi Arabia public investment fund, which is now pulling its cash out of the sport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zybek doesn\u2019t have the financial backing of the Saudi billions but Blitz has attracted commercial interest over the years, and Coopers Brewery is the latest business to get on board with his league.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompletely opposite to the LIV Golf model where they had all the money in the world and they can just come out with a bang,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Travis Head and Wade Ormsby ahead of the crowd in Adelaide.\u00a0Blitz Golf<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing there is definitely an appetite for what we\u2019re doing, and a gap in the market for short format golf, much like there was in cricket back in the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny with LIV Golf, with all that money, it does appeal to a lot of people, but it hasn\u2019t really filled the void that golf had, and I think we\u2019ve got the right product.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve bided our time, we have the right investment now, we\u2019re getting that sponsorship and that growth. I think the next few years will be some rapid growth for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zybek\u2019s aim is to attract new eyeballs to golf while still respecting the sport\u2019s traditional format.<\/p>\n

He says his idea has the support of some of the world\u2019s major tours and organisations, and he hopes to one day even work in tandem with Golf Australia, the DP World Tour and even the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are friends with everybody. We have friends at LIV Golf, we have friends at the PGA,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think because our product is so short, and our series is run in a short amount of time, it doesn\u2019t really clash as such with the other tours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t go out there trying to steal players. We\u2019re still doing something great for golf, we\u2019re bringing new people to the events.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe in the future a major tour like the US or DP decides they want to do a partnership and build it onto the front of their events, or it might even be mid-tournament they decide to put on a Friday night, it might work at some events where round two finishes, now we\u2019re going to put on a Blitz Golf event on the Friday night as a spectacle.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the shortness we can actually co-exist with all the tours and maybe even supplement their tours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blitz Golf held its first tournament in England this year and Zybek plans to hold one in America before too long.<\/p>\n

The 2027 Australian series kicks off in Perth on January 3 and will feature six events, finishing on the Gold Coast on February 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Adelaide businessman is at the forefront of a radical new golf league he says can do what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-853253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}