Editor”s note: On the Links will return to its normal Saturday slot later this week.
Had I penned this week”s column just seven days ago, it would have started something like this. The European PGA Tour is the Avis of professional golf tours. It is well run and some of its venues boast purses comparable to the biggest events in America. It goes to some very interesting places. And yet it is nonetheless an afterthought circuit to the world class golfers of the modern era.
Tiger Woods made more money this year on the European Tour than anyone else. However, he”s not the circuit”s official leading money winner because he didn”t enter the required 11 events to be eligible for the overall prize, the Order of Merit trophy.
Going into the final European Tour tournament of the year, the limited field Volvo Masters at Valderama in Spain, South African Ernie Els led the circuit in earnings over Englishman Justin Rose and Ireland”s Padraig Harrington, the reigning British Open champion.
The field at Valderama was limited to the top 60 money winners on the European Tour and featured a first-place prize of just more than $1 million (667,000 Euros). Interestingly enough, Angel Cabrera, Lee Westwood, Nick O”Hern, Michael Campbell, and Darren Clarke all chose not to tee it up at the European”s version of the Tour Championship, instead going to Singapore to play in an Asian Tour event put on by Barclays Bank.
In an even stranger twist, Els, the European Tour”s leading money winner going into the Volvo Masters, blew off Valderama and teed it up in Singapore instead. He turned his back on the $1 million first-place prize, and the chance to win the Order of Merit and its 10-year exemption to play elsewhere. Els shot 72-76 ? 148 to miss the cut. By the way, he collected a reported $2 million appearance fee to play in Asia.
With Els and some of the other big-name European Tour stars playing in Singapore, a field of 54 teed it up at the Volvo Masters during the first week of November. Justin Rose ended up defeating Simon Dyson in a four-hole, sudden-death playoff to win the Volvo as well as the Order of Merit. When the year end results were tabulated, Rose was atop the money list with $4.27 million, Els was second at $3.62 million, and Harrington finished third with $3.57 million in earnings and an unforgettable major championship trophy to go along with it.
Rose”s European Tour season had a distinctively non-European flair to it. He lives in Orlando and spends the majority of his time competing on American soil. Because the four major championships as well as the three World Golf Championships are co-sanctioned European Tour events, golfers like Rose, Els, Sergio Garcia, and Retief Goosen can double dip and belong to both tours.
In the case of Rose, six of the 12 European Tour events he played in during the 2007 season were contested in the United States and also counted on the American PGA Tour. Rose made the cut in all four majors, came in second to Tiger at the WGC tournament in Akron, added a second-place finish at the Wentworth Club in the BMW Championship, and capped it off with his only win at the Volvo Masters at Valderama.
Just one week ago I would have written that the European Tour is a second-rate professional circuit. Its true stars such as Harrington, Garcia, Els and the others are primarily American Tour professionals. Its top homegrown performers such as Clarke and Westwood were willing to prioritize a tournament many time zones away over their own tour”s championship, all the while chasing guaranteed appearance money.
There”s the American PGA Tour with Tiger, Phil and everyone else who wants to be a part of the big show, and then there”s the European Tour, an afterthought that”s home to Colin Montgomerie, Sandy Lyle, and a host of talented golfers. Of course, many of those talented golfers have an added quest. They hope to play well enough in Europe so that they can make it in the United States.
However, the landscape that is the European Tour changed dramatically earlier this week. European Tour commissioner George O”Grady announced that starting in 2009, the Order of Merit will be eliminated, only to be replaced by the world”s richest tournament, the $10 million Dubai World Championship. It will conclude the season-long Race to Dubai, a takeoff on the American PGA Tour”s Fed Ex Cup. The winner will receive $2 million and the rest will be divided among the top 60 money winners.
The all new European Tour of the 21st century has little in common with its 1980s counterpart that featured the likes of Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, and Ian Woosnam, and served as the early home of international golfers such as Greg Norman, Nick Price, and Vijay Singh. That European Tour hosted 25-30 events annually, with most of the events played in the British Isles.
Nowadays, the European Tour hosts some 40-plus events and travels the globe. It visits Australia, South Africa and plays 14 tourneys on the continent of Asia. The American Tour has its Texas Swing. The European Tour has its Desert Swing of the Qatar Masters, the Dubai Desert Classic, and the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship.
It”s easy to imagine that just two years from now, Tiger and Phil and Jim Furyk and others will be teeing it up in the $10 million Dubai World Championship. They will play in enough European Tour events to qualify for the Race to Dubai. They”ll play in a couple of extra tournaments under the European Tour umbrella and collect a nice appearance fee too, something that”s not possible at Memphis or Miami or Milwaukee.
Suddenly, the European PGA Tour looks a whole lot more palatable to the top names of world golf. Its amazing what money and a venue like Dubai can do to change the entire image of what has been for many years an afterthought of a circuit.
