Euro golf events need bigger purses

GOLF’S European Tour must offer more prize money to deter players from defecting to the US PGA circuit, Europe’s tour chief executive said yesterday.

Of the world’s top 10 players, only British duo Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose plus Sweden’s Henrik Stenson are members of the European Tour.

“We need to raise prize purses, increase playing opportunities and give our elite players an opportunity for a viable option to the PGA Tour – that won’t happen overnight,” Keith Pelley, chief executive of the European Tour, told a news conference in Dubai ahead of the season-ending $8 million DP World Tour Championship, which begins tomorrow.

“We need to be too important to be dismissed. There are many ways that we will execute that through television, sponsorship, partnerships.”

But increasing these revenues will be difficult without more of golf ’s star players in attendance, and to attract those names the tour requires more money.

“We need to provide a viable alternative to the PGA Tour for our elite, medium and low-ranked players,” said Canadian Pelley, who took over from George O’Grady in August.

“That’s not going to happen necessarily in 2016. You’ll start to see it come to fruition in 2018.”

May’s $5.33m BMW PGA Championship at Britain’s Wentworth course is usually billed as the European Tour’s flagship event, yet Pelley downplayed that description, pointing out the US tour’s Byron Nelson event held the same week offered a larger money pot.

“That’s unacceptable. Wentworth needs to be $8 to 10 million,” said Pelley. “Our flagship event right here is the DP World Championship.”

The Dubai tournament is the last of four in the tour’s so-called Final Series, with a further $5m in prize money to be split between the top 15 money-winners this season.

From 2016, the Final Series will constitute three events – Dubai and the Turkish Airlines Open, plus a new addition in South Africa’s Nedbank Golf Challenge.

Shanghai’s WGC-HSBC Champions will no longer be included, although it will remain as a regularseason event, and the BMW Masters, also held in Shanghai, will be removed from the schedule entirely. – Reuters