Another Look at Amateur Wins on the European Tour

On the heels of Shane Lowry's win in the 3 Irish Open, I wrote a column talking about the trend of amateur winners on the European Tour in the last several seasons.  My verdict about the trend was that it had to be a solid for the Tour because it refreshes the talent pool with young names.

Interestingly enough, AP's Doug Ferguson wrote a similar column a few days later that investigated the same topic.  His conclusion was a bit different.  He took the wins of Shane Lowry, Danny Lee, and Pablo Martin as a sign that European Tour fields are consistently weak enough to allow an amateur to win.

Or, at least that's what Scott Verplank - a former PGA Tou winner as an amateur (Western Open) - says.

"There's a lot of good, young kids coming along," Verplank said. "That it happens three times in Europe over the last couple of years, you could construe that as another show of strength of our tournaments compared with everyone else's. But that's nothing against the amateur players. The best amateurs from around the world are as good as the best in the United States."

Ah, but Ferguson counters with the fact that the Irish Open had the strongest field of the weak in the eyes of the Official World Golf Rankings.  You know how I feel about the bias in the OWGR, but having names like McIlroy, Westwood, and Harrington in the field certainly beef up the stature of the event.

So, are amateurs winning on the European Tour because of weaker fields?  Probably not.  The three amateur wins have occurred in a time where every global professional says that talent is deeper than ever.  That depth is also consistent across the PGA and European Tours.

In over 1100 events, there had never been an amateur to win on the European Tour.  At golf's greatest depth ever, three have won on that junket and two were against fields with pretty impressive names. Meanwhile, the last win by an amateur on the PGA Tour came in 1991 - during an arguably weak time on the Tour.

It would be quite a dismissal of the achievement to say that these wins just show that the European Tour is weak.