European Tour Nabbing More PGA Tour Stars

The British journos needed something to distract them from burying Nick Faldo and then getting reemed for it by the players, the US media, and many European fans.  So, they decided to cover a real story - the fact that many US PGA Tour players are committing or about to commit to a European Tour membership next year.

Lawrence Donegan has a piece in the Telegraph on it.  Yes, I know that Donegan was one of the goofs who was writing junk on paper after the Ryder Cup.  But, he has some pertinent information in the piece - if you can sift through the delusional bias.

First, something we pretty much already know:

The world No2 is yet to make an official announcement but multiple sources in the game confirmed yesterday that he will almost certainly commit to playing more golf outside the United States, and one leading agent said several other big names were contemplating following suit.

Then something no one really cares about:

Australian golfer Robert Allenby, ranked 33rd in the world, said yesterday that he was increasingly disillusioned with life on the PGA tour in the States.

But, Allenby did say something interesting about one of his motivations:

"Some tournaments over here get a bit monotonous, with the thick rough. I miss the fairway by two feet and I'm screwed. My body hasn't been handling it very well, particularly my tennis elbow. The other thing is to freshen my mind up."

I have talked on air and in print about how stupid the setups have been at regular Tour stops since 2005.  Maybe the conversion of many top players from full-time to 3/4 time on the PGA Tour will cause Ponte Vedra to seriously consider setups more like this year's Bridgestone Invitational and less like this year's Memorial.

Then Donegan starts to lose it:

Allenby may be motivated in part by personal issues but he, like others, is responding to what is widely perceived to be a shift in the balance of power in golf from the PGA tour in the States towards the European tour.

He then contradicts himself two paragraphs later with:

"I can't foresee a situation where the European tour will take over from the PGA tour as the most powerful in the world but the more top-class names it attracts the more chance it has of strengthening its brand," said Andrew Chandler of ISM, one of the game's biggest agencies.

Ok, it was a bit of embellishment.  But, the point remains that it is hard to turn away basically a free chance at approximately $4 million in one tournament in Dubai by playing a few less clunker PGA Tour events and substituting them with mediocre Euro Tour events.

With the credit crunch affecting many American financial institutions the long-term prospects for sponsorship of golf in the US are gloomy, in stark contrast to the opportunities enjoyed by the European tour. The latter has a long tradition of staging events in the Middle East and Asia, where next year will see the start of the European tour's "Road to Dubai" series which culminates in an end-of-season tournament in the Emirates where the players will be competing for a $20m prize fund - the biggest in the history of the game.

This is very curious for a couple of reasons.  First, the opportunities enjoyed by the European Tour in the Middle East are through a deal with Leisurecorp - the Dubai-owned REAL ESTATE AND LAND DEVELOPMENT company.  Basically, a bigger Ginn Company, and we all know how that turned out for Carolyn Bivens.

Also, Donegan is a bit misleading in the Dubai World Championship purse being the biggest in the game's history.  Technically, that distinction still belongs to the Tour Championship, which will award approximately $40 million this week after its results. 

But, the Dubai World Championship's $10 million prize pool is the largest in the world.  Too bad that Jack Vickers' $10 million tourney was rejected by the Tour in lieu of having Tiger's AT&T National here in DC.  I still expect that the PGA Tour will up the purse for the Players to something like $10.1 million just to stick it to the European Tour.