The PGA Tour v The European Tour
Sky Sports viewers will be able to watch both the world’s top golf tours live and in High Definition for the first time next year. But which is the number one? Ben Sullivan argues it has to be the dollar-laden PGA Tour, but Mark Kendall reckons true quality belongs closer to home. Check out their views and share your own…
The PGA Tour
The PGA Tour has been the unrivalled world leader since its formation in 1968 (tournaments were previously run by the PGA of America) but its pre-eminence has been challenged in recent years.
The European Tour has become truly global and in the Race to Dubai has a prize to rival the FedEx Cup series across the Atlantic.
The very creation of the FedEx Cup three years ago hints at a sense of frailty in the PGA Tour hierarchy and it has to be said that the end of season series (which doesn’t actually end the season) has not caught the sporting public’s imagination in the way that may have been hoped.
The economic crisis has also taken its toll, with so many of the Tour’s events reliant on sponsorship from the financial institutions and motor manufacturers that have taken such a hit in the recession.
But let’s face it, the PGA Tour is still the market leader – and by a distance.
It is still by far the richest tour in the world, with weekly purses in excess of $5million that simply cannot be matched on a regular basis elsewhere. Other tours boast tournaments with comparable purses, but more often a tournament’s entire purse is equivalent to less than that week’s winner alone will pick up in America.
America boasts the best fields – not every week, maybe, but over a season, the best players play more often on the PGA Tour than elsewhere.
The biggest draws in golf are Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. You can count Tiger and Phils’ appearances on other tours on the fingers of one hand. They may not turn out that often on the PGA Tour but their 10 or 12 appearances immediately make a tournament a showpiece event. No other Tour can boast that.
Then there are world ranking points, which have become so important to top professionals across the globe. If players want to win a lot of ranking points, they simply have to tee it up regularly in America against the strongest fields.
Finally, there is the major factor. The three Stateside majors are not officially part of the PGA Tour but their effect is to boost their host nation.
The top players want to play in America a week or two before the majors, so the warm-up events become big tournaments in their own right. Meanwhile, tours elsewhere struggle as tournaments are populated by players who haven’t qualified for the majors.
The European Tour certainly has plenty to recommend it – variety, global reach, and improving prize money – but when it comes down to it, the PGA Tour is still definitely Number One.
The European Tour
There was no doubt that the European Tour had to evolve and grow if it was to remain a viable alternative to America’s PGA Tour, but with its new ‘Race to Dubai’ format it has done that in some style.
Having revamped the Order of Merit and launched the Race to Dubai in 2009, the new competition proved a roaring success and provided just about the perfect climax last weekend.
Heading into the season-ending Dubai World Championship four players still had realistic ambitions of ending the season as European number one – the kind of exciting finish that the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup has struggled to provide in its first few years of existence.
In the end it was an inspired Lee Westwood who emerged from the pack to clinch the first-ever Race to Dubai crown. The Englishman produced what was by his own admission a career-best performance to win the tournament, edging above Rory McIlroy in the final money-list standings in the process, and securing a pay-day of more than £1million.
In total Westwood won over £3.7million last season and that underlines why the European Tour took the step of revamping the Order of Merit format, because the new system offers substantially greater riches, which has in turn attracted some of the world’s best players.
In recent years it was all but unheard of for leading US-based players to take up European Tour membership, but in 2009 the likes of Anthony Kim, Camilo Villegas, Boo Weekley and Ben Curtis all did so, while Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson made appearances in European Tour-sanctioned events in destinations such as China and Australia.
That also goes to underline the progressive new approach the European Tour has taken in its quest to develop. It is now undoubtedly the most global and inclusive Tour on the planet.
The Race to Dubai boasts 51 tournaments in a total of 27 different locations with countries as diverse as Thailand, Czech Republic, Portugal and South Africa all playing host to events.
Such expansion is not only raising the profile of the game around the globe, but also increasing the standard of golfers from emerging regions, with Asia being the biggest case in point.
With the European Tour co-sanctioning a number of tournaments with the Asian Tour, the region now offers some of the most high-quality and lucrative stop-offs on the calendar and the results are being seen on the course with YE Yang underlining the region’s undoubted potential with his memorable USPGA triumph over Tiger Woods – the first major success by an Asian man.
Of course the variety of venues also ensures that the European Tour serves up a real mixture of golf, with players competing on links lay-outs in Scotland to the more American-style courses to be found in Spain and Portugal and plenty more in between.
The key is that the European Tour has recognised the need to change and with its continued expansion, and the new-look Race to Dubai, has provided a format that has retained the cream of Europe’s talent while attracting some of the biggest names from around the world.
The PGA Tour remains the biggest and richest out there, but its cousin across the pond no longer suffers from an inferiority complex.
