Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Different agendas are not doing our Tour any favours
GOLF Club Milano hosts the return of the Rolex Series to the European Tour this week.
A mouth watering $7m is up for grabs at the Italian Open in Parco Reale di Monza.
This is the fifth of eight events on the Rolex Series in its inaugural year and a lot of big names will tee it up.
Masters champion Sergio Garcia and World No5 Jon Rahm are poised to woo the galleries. There’s a lot to relish, although I do find it odd the European Tour is allowing our guys to play in Malaysia this week.
The CIMB Classic is a PGA Tour event so it’s in direct competition, yet the likes of Rafa Cabrera Bello, Thomas Pieters and Peter Uihlein are all playing in Kuala Lumpur.
Surely European Tour chiefs should be taking a stance to protect its events?
You’d like to think so because this is crunch time on the calendar.
A bonanza time too for a lot of players fighting tooth and nail to keep their card.
With only two events left of the regular season – the Andalucia Valderamma Masters concludes the campaign next week – the mark to retain your playing rights is 347,000 points.
Australian Wade Ormsby currently lies on the bubble – he’s 100th in the Race to Dubai rankings – but entering the final furlong, it’s incredibly tight.
Away from the glitz and the glamour of Sergio and Rahm, it’s the likes of Wade who come into sharp focus at this time of the year.
These are guys scrapping for their lives at the other end of the tour, lower profile golfers trying to hang onto their livelihood.
I remember playing with Wade in the final event of the regular season at the Open de Madrid back in 2004.
He needed a top-10 finish to keep his card and managed to do it by shooting a final round 66.
A birdie at the final hole helped him squeak in on a T6.
To hold his nerve the way he did that Sunday was remarkable and it remains one of the best rounds of golf I’ve witnessed.
The pressure Wade was under permeated the group and we found ourselves cheering him home.
The stakes are huge at this time of year and the hothouse atmosphere takes its toll. It can make grown men cry. At the same time, it can be career changing, especially with the improved purses on offer.
Marc Warren and Oliver Fisher stepped back from the brink with top-10 finishes in Scotland last week.
Many will want to repeat the feat in Italy, but it’ll take game and guts to deliver peace of mind on Sunday.
It’s time to step up if you want to avoid Andalucian anguish next week.