European Tour outlines ambitious plans
European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley laid out ambitious plans with hopes of becoming a “viable alternative” to the PGA Tour.
That starts with an increase in prize money, but another measure of the mountain he has to climb is the world ranking.
The gap continues to widen in the average ranking points for PGA Tour events compared with Europe. Including the four majors and the four World Golf Championships, tournament winners on the PGA Tour earned an average of 56.4 points compared with 42.2 points for the average European Tour event winner. That’s a difference of 14.2 points, up from 13.3 points a year ago.
Throw out the majors (each worth 100 points to the winner) and the four World Golf Championship events, and the PGA Tour offered an average of 49.5 points to a tournament winner compared with 32.9 points for the European Tour.
The European Tour had six regular events that offered 50 points or more, including the BMW PGA Championship, which is guaranteed 64 points as the flagship event. The PGA Tour had seven events that offered 60 points or more, including The Players Championship, which is guaranteed 80 points ( The Players actually has a stronger field by raw numbers than three of the majors).
The four events in The Finals Series for the Race to Dubai offered an average of 53 points to the winner. The four FedEx Cup playoff events on the PGA Tour awarded an average of 68.5 points to the winner.
Pelley, who joined the tour after resigning as president of Rogers Media last spring, is aware he needs time to become a viable option, and his target is the next generation of players.
“That’s not going to happen necessarily in 2016,” Pelley said last month in Dubai. “You’ll start to see it happen in 2017. You’ll start to see it come to fruition in 2018. We definitely in three to five years will have a viable alternative, so that 17-, 18-, 19-year-old doesn’t necessarily need to go to America to be able to make as much money as they possibly can.”
Billy Horschel wanted to be the first player to win the Fed Ex Cup in consecutive years. Not only did he fail to make it to the Tour Championship, he failed to win a tournament last season.
Horschel is known as a streaky player. He had a big run in the spring of 2013 when he won in New Orleans, and then had only four top 10s in his next 39 events. He had a great run in September 2014 when he won the BMW Championship and Tour Championship to capture the FedEx Cup, and he has had only three top 10s in 30 tournaments worldwide since then. He thinks he knows the fix. “We played a lot with Jordan (Spieth), a lot with Zach (Johnson). We see them hit it 10 to 15 feet on average, and I’m hitting it 20 to 30,” Horschel said. “For me to be a more consistent player and have those runs last longer than a four- to five-week stretch, my short game and wedge play need to be more consistent.”
Horschel said he has worked so hard on his short game the last few months that “I’m sick of hitting wedges.”
“If we look back at 2016, the reason I’ ll have had a great year is because I put in all the time on my wedge play, and it’s a result of it,” he said.