Page 11 - Golf World (February 2020)

“I don’t have any sympathy for anyone that cheats. If you make a
mistake maybe once, you could maybe understand, but to give a
bit of a bullshit response like the camera angle, that’s pretty up
there.” Cameron Smith is one of many players unimpressed by Reed’s actions and response.
Y WEEKLY, WE’LL
the best players, you can’t
attract the big money. That puts
your event at risk.
Take the Houston Open, for
instance. October’s edition
featured none of the top 30 in
the world rankings and only two
– Henrik Stenson and Keegan
Bradley – of the top 50.
“I’m learning that players are
interested in chasing the big
money internationally and
playing overseas,” says
tournament director Colby
Callaway. “That’s not up to me
to figure that out, but up to the
Tour to help, because there are
tournaments who are saying,
‘What about us?’”
Each tour imposes a
minimum number of events
players must play to retain
BE DISAPPOINTED’
membership, but even those are
being reduced. “The change to
our minimum tournament
requirement recognises that
many of our members are global
players who, at the same time,
wish to remain loyal to the
European Tour,” said European
Tour CEO Keith Pelley, reducing
the minimum number of starts
from 13 to five.
That’s a bit like saying you’re
only asking your cheating wife
to be faithful four nights a week
now because you know she
wishes to remain loyal to you.
Besides, if you are one of the
top players and have won a few
events in recent seasons,
exemptions and invitations tend
to be stacked in your favour.
The issue of players choosing
to skip certain events has been
exacerbated by the revamped
schedule which came into place
for the 2019 season, with the
majors now crammed into just a
14-week period. The increasingly
global European Tour,
meanwhile, involves more travel
than ever before, with 47
tournaments across 31 countries,
only 13 of which are actually in
Europe.
Too busy
The top players don’t need to
play events they don’t fancy and
would rather focus their
attention on trying to win
majors or, at the very least,
WGC events with the bigger
prize pots on offer.
Pelley accepts that there isn’t
golfworldtop100.com | February 2020 Golf World 11
much he or anyone else can do.
“If we expected the top players
to play on a weekly basis, then
our expectations would be
unrealistic,” he says. “There is
unbelievable opportunity for the
players right now. There are
probably less than 10 golf
tournaments in the world now
that are mandatory. And there
are 35 tournaments offering
prize money of at least $7
million. We recognise the
multiple choices they have
about where to play.”
He says, “there is no simple
solution” and “if top-player
participation was the only
metric that our sponsors and
partners look towards, then we
are setting ourselves up for
disappointment”.
Given the increasing
likelihood of a global tour that
will merge, in some manner, the
PGA Tour and European Tour,
some of the lesser events may
cease to exist soon anyway.
Events that can offer enough
prestige, prize money and
ranking points will continue to
thrive, as will those happy to
offer seven-figure appearance
fees to individual players –
here’s looking at you, Saudi
International.
Of course it’s a shame that
some of this excess money at
the top of golf’s pyramid cannot
be dispersed to its feeder tours,
where top-drawer golfers don’t
make enough to survive, or
perhaps to the women’s game,
where prize finds are, at best, a
couple of per cent the size of
those at a PGA Tour event. But
professional golf never has been
and never will be a communist
endeavour. The rich will get
richer, the poor poorer.
As fans, we’ll still get to watch
the world’s best players.
Perhaps less often, yes, but
fresh, hungry, and competing
for the prizes that matter most,
with the freedom to play
attacking golf. They don’t need
to worry about whether
dropping from second to fourth
will cost them a hundred grand.
They are out there to win.
Second is nowhere. That creates
a certain do-or-die, knockout
punch-seeking approach that is
fantastic to watch. As long as
you can afford to, of course.