Finally, after months of seemingly intractable negotiations, the tournament dates have been allocated for the end of the 2111 season. Normally the date issues are easily settled with the three main events - The Masters, The Australian Open and the PGA Championship - generally happy to take the times that suited.

The problem is the invasion of Presidents Cup, returning to Melbourne for the first time since 1998. Its date has been settled for years now and the three main events were desperate for the immediate weeks either side of the Cup.

The obvious benefit is that players are more likely to come a week early or stay behind an extra week.

They may well do that, but only if they are paid significant compensation. To think they would come a week early to Kingston Heath, for nothing, to acclimatise to the sandbelt conditions is dreaming. Most don't go a week early to practice on the links of Britain the week before The Open Championship so they most certainly not going to do it for the less professionally important President's Cup.

Under the cover of the capitulation of our batsmen at the MCG, it was announced on Boxing Day that the Australian Open would be played in Sydney the week prior to the Cup and the PGA would come immediately after.

IMG, the owner of the Masters, clearly lost their position and they are going to make an announcement of their position in the coming days.

The PGA Championship has been the final event of the year for some time now but clearly they felt a date after the Cup may give them a better field.

It is played on the resort course at Coolum and player's families hugely enjoy a week at that fantastic resort winding down after a long year away. The course though is far from the championship quality of Kingston Heath or Victoria (hosts of the '09 and ‘10 Masters respectively) or The Lakes (The Open) and it has been a long time since the PGA was played on one of our very best courses.

The last time it was played with any regularity on one of the best ten courses in the country was when it was played at Royal Melbourne (our best course) between 1978 and 1983 and that coincided with a glorious era of the Championship. Hale Irwin, Stewart Ginn, Sam Torrance, Severiano Ballesteros, Graham Marsh and Bob Shearer were the six winners, the fields were terrific and it was second only behind The Australian Open in terms of prestige.

The sponsor was lost after the 1982 event and since 1984 it has been farmed around the country to anybody who would contribute to the cost of running the event or anyone who would happily take it.

I am one who thinks that for a tournament to earn the respect it craves it should be played at one of the best courses in the country. The unfortunate reality of overseas professional golf is that events go to places that commercially suit and the quality of the golf course architecture is far down the list of priorities.

As a tour, the Australasian circuit has done well at sticking with our best courses but the PGA have chosen to go down the path of the rest of the world. That is fine because it works for them but it also relegates their event, in my opinion, to a position of being the third most important tournament on the tour. The allocation of the preferred dates should reflect that.

The glory days of The Masters were when Greg Norman was at his crowd-pulling best, it was run by its owners Frank Williams and David Inglis and Huntingdale was a course universally admired by all the players.

Over time, Greg inevitably played less well (or not at all), Williams and Inglis sold out to IMG and the course was altered to the point where there was no longer a universal admiration for the layout.

There was no question that by the middle of the decade about to pass, the Masters had lost much of the lustre of the 1980s and early '90s but there was an almost unbelievable reversal of fortune when IMG moved the event to Kingston Heath and brought their client Tiger Woods to play.

The Masters of 2009 was arguably the most exciting event ever played in Australia and it breathed life into what had the air of a soon-to-be moribund tournament.

The Australian Open is unquestionably the trophy the players most want their name engraved on. The others are not even close and it is the most important event in the country.

The NSW Government, and Paul McNamee when he was running the Open, was the first to make a play for Woods and they made a pitch at the US Masters in 2007. They had the money and were more than keen for Tiger to play in Sydney.

If Woods had played in The Open, it would have enjoyed a Masters-like revival and the crowds in Sydney would have been equally massive but it was not to be.

Obviously IMG was going to push him toward the event they owned and in which they had a huge investment. The Masters was a significant financial success and The Open still needs some help when it comes to the balance sheet.

Seemingly there have been a number of threats flying around as everybody concerned negotiated a position. Essentially almost everyone involved including the three state governments, Channel 9 (Masters), Channel 10 (Open and PGA), JB Were (the Masters Sponsor) have all threatened to ‘get out of golf' if things did not go their way.

So what now for the Masters? IMG will play their card in a week or two but until then one is forced to ask: ‘Did anybody involved ever once consider, not what was best for them, but what was best for the game'?