I'm positive you heard the large information from the European Tour. For one thing, the mini-occasion that Tiger, Rory, and 6 different golfers are playing in Turkey this week becomes a restrained-subject (some thing like 78 players) on subsequent yr's ET schedule. It's going to be simply earlier than their very last massive tournament inside the Race to Dubai. That was thrilling.
But I turned into greater interested in their different information -- particularly, that the ET will depend Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup, and Seve Trophy team activities against the 13-tournament minimum currently required for ET membership. This should probably be a massive powerplay for the Euro Tour.
Here's the deal: Some tournaments already count against membership requirements on both the PGA and Euro Tours -- all 4 majors and all 4 WGC events. That means a US Tour member can add just 5 events and be an ET member as well. Still, that's a fair amount of travel. By counting the team events, the bigger name players will only need to play 4 other ET events.
It's the "larger call" element that intrigues me. This may want to have a double impact for the ET. First of all -- and maximum apparent -- it can entice a few US players to take ET club. Getting the huge US names to play their excursion greater regularly should definitely help them financially as they, like maximum businesses, have misplaced some of their sponsors because of the financial weather around the globe.
Less obvious is the capability to hold their own huge call players who're choosing US club. Minimizing the demands on players like Westwood and McIlroy, amongst others, may encourage them to hold twin club. (This should become being a critical problem to them. Colsaerts is playing the Frys.Com this week, having taken brief club to look if he can qualify for the Top a hundred twenty five. He's most effective approximately $100k short proper now.)
While it's not a sure thing, Tiger has already announced that he will consider ET membership after he studies the new criteria more closely. Other US players might consider it as well, as the ET doesn't have the limitations on appearance fees that the PGA Tour does. (Well, officially I guess they do, but we all know they aren't too zealous about stopping it. Hey, business is business... and golf sponsorships are BIG business.)
One possibility I discover interesting is whether or not the PGA Tour ought to ultimately locate itself making a comparable choice. Might we attain a factor in which america Tour finds it in its pleasant interest to depend crew occasions towards their very own club requirements in an try to entice more large name European players? Depending on how the arena rankings shake out over the following couple of years, it may not be the sort of farfetched concept. Remember, the team occasions affect a exceedingly small range of players, all of them massive name gamers who could be large attracts for US occasions as well.
That's probably not going to be a major problem any time soon... but things change quickly nowadays. And with the increasingly large number of big money events willing to pay for the big names, some of those big name players may eventually realize that -- with sponsor exemptions and such -- they don't even need to belong to a tour to play the 15 to 18 events per year that many of them seem to be happy with.
If that happens, the balance of power could shift considerably. Then it'll be the players who make the moves.
It's well worth thinking about...
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