The 50-year history and the future of the European Tour could see something happen Sunday at the final event of season, the DP World Tour Championship Dubai. This is something that has never happened before: An American could win Race to Dubai.
Collin Morikawa, the winner of the British Open, is in first position. He is followed by Billy Horschel who won the BMW PGA Championship. Both are Americans and members both of the PGA Tour and the European Tour.
Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champion was still in contention last year. Lee Westwood, an Englishman, won the title for the third consecutive time. (The race was previously known as the Order of Merit.
Jon Rahm, the highest-ranked player in the world was hiding in third place, but he declared on Sunday that he would not play in Dubai.
Yet, the reason top Americans are so keen to play on the European Tour isn’t clear. It is simply that professional golf is changing.
The tour was once a province for non-American and European players. The tour became a testing ground to help future stars. Brooks Koepka, a US player, played on the European Tour as he began his career to prove his skills and get membership on the PGA Tour. He won four major championships.
The Race to Dubai leader may not be of any significance today, as the European Tour next year will not be called the European Tour. Last week, the tour’s parent company, European Tour Group, announced its flagship tour will be known as the DP World Tour starting in 2022.
Even Keith Pelley, the European Tour’s chief executive, was at a loss when asked about American dominance in the yearlong race and what it meant.
“I’d have answered that question completely differently before November 2020,” he said, referring to when a strategic alliance was announced between the PGA Tour and the European Tour.
“Before the PGA Tour became our partner, as opposed to a competitor, it would have meant a lot more for an American to be in contention in the Race to Dubai,” Pelley said. “We are no longer competing for top players. Collin Morikawa (and Billy Horschel) are great players and great ambassadors for the game. We are grateful for their efforts. The importance of an American winning would have been much greater in the past.”
The European Tour and PGA Tour have always been rivals for players’ and commercial dollars. But the Covid lockdown was broken and a partnership emerged.
When major events — like the Masters, the United States Open, PGA Championship and the British Open — were initially canceled or postponed last year, the two tours came together to see which events could be salvaged and staged safely. While many regular-season events were lost, three of the four majors were held — albeit without fans. (The British Open was canceled.
The PGA Tour acquired a 15% stake of the European Tour Group from that cooperation in May. They also began to coordinate their schedules so the top players would be able to play in each tour’s big events. Players who were not allowed to participate in those events due to their ranking would be allowed to play other events that would count toward their rankings on both tours.
Next year, three such events will be held: the Genesis Scottish Open and the Barbasol Championship.
“There’s no question both organizations are going to be made stronger by working together,” said Rick Anderson, chief media officer for the PGA Tour.
However, it was not as simple to determine what this cooperation means for golfers as scheduling, commercial licenses, and large advertising dollars.
This is a result of the increasingly intertwined golf ecosystem. There used to be clear distinctions about what each tour meant. The PGA and the European Tours were rivals through the 1990s, with each tour’s players really only crossing the Atlantic for majors like the Masters or the British Open.
In 1986, the European Tour launched the Challenge Tour as a testing ground for future European Tour golfers. The PGA Tour also created the Ben Hogan Tour in 1990 to serve the same purpose as the PGA Tour.
The developmental tours fed into the main tour at that time. Over the years, however, players began to move among them as it became more difficult to get playing privileges during the Tiger Woods era.
“Our tours were vertically integrated,” Pelley said. “Now they’re horizontally integrated, and it’s a significant difference. What does this mean for the long-term? That’s the $1 million question. I can’t emphatically give you an answer.”
There are many opportunities for top players. Horschel is aware that he could achieve two firsts by winning or finishing high enough at DP World Championship Dubai. This event ends on Sunday. In addition to being the first American to win the European Tour’s season-long title, he could be just the second player to win both the Race to Dubai and the FedEx Cup, the PGA Tour’s equivalent.
Horschel, 34 years old, lives in Ponte Vedra Beach in Fla., where he is based on the PGA Tour. He said he grew-up watching tournaments such as the BMW PGA Championship on European Tour in the early hours of the morning and then was inspired to play. He is a popular player in Europe and hopes to play at least five to seven tournaments each year on the European Tour.
This is what the alliance between the two tours would accomplish with the increased sponsorship from DP World. Each tournament under the DP World Tour will have at least a $2 million prize purse, while next year’s version of the season-ending DP World Championship will have a $10 million purse, up from about $9 million this year.
There will also be more cooperation so the elite players can play in each tour’s biggest events. “The thinking was how can we organize our respective schedules, so this is more planned out,” Anderson said. “If you organize these things, it’ll be better for both organizations and not be disruptive to the tours.
(Neither Pelley nor Anderson would comment on Greg Norman’s new Saudi-backed golf venture, LIV Golf Investments, which aims to create a premier golf league to lure the top players.)
The impact of the big events on all the other golfers is where the focus is now less on. Their path is not as straight as it used to be. The European and American youth players were able to move from the Challenge Tours and Korn Ferry Tours to the PGA or European Tours. However, the alliance and the higher prize money offered by DP World could make them less competitive.
One way to acknowledge that is that both tours will sanction two smaller events next year in Barbasol Championship or Barracuda Championship. This will give professional players playing opportunities who did not qualify to play at the British Opens or Scottish Opens..
“Today the different ways you make it to the PGA Tour are varied, and there isn’t a clear path to get there,” Anderson said. “We want to identify clear lanes for the players who ask, how do I progress in our sport and create options?”
For now, though, all eyes are on golf’s elite players to see who will win this year’s Race to Dubai.
“Collin and I have a chance to do something that hasn’t been done before,” Horschel said. “It’s going to be a tight race. You have a lot of great players who have the chance to win the Race to Dubai.”
Source: NY Times
