Turkey shoot for Willett as McIlroy leads player exodus
What an extraordinary state of affairs we have this week on the European tour. What should have been a condition of high excitement has been replaced by one of high alert.
It’s the first week of the Final Series, the three events that close out the Race to Dubai.
the prize fund is $7million (£5.8m), the largest offered for any event run solely by the tour so far this campaign. For the first time all year, the players will be competing for more money than in the equivalent event on the PGA tour.
Just one problem. Virtually nobody of any note is showing up to play.
the top 10 in the Race to Dubai, the men with it all on the line? Just three will be in attendance — and two of those, Lee Westwood and the Masters champion Danny Willett, are only playing because the event is being run by the company that manages them.
the problem is the tournament is being staged in turkey, and who wants to go there when the British government website is saying the threat of an attack by ISIS on tourism sites in the country remains high? and when the american consulate is removing civilian staff from Istanbul and advising caution among US citizens travelling to other parts of the troubled nation?
Yet why should the tour cancel the event if their security advisers are presumably telling them the venue in antalya, a glistening Mediterranean jewel and a long way from the Syrian border, remains a perfectly safe place to play?
this is one of those where you can see both arguments. If I was in the shoes of Rory McIlroy — who prompted a slew of late withdrawals when he pulled out last Saturday — I wouldn’t be going there either; but if I was Keith Pelley, the chief executive of the European tour, I’d be damned determined the show went on if that is what the security people on the ground were advising.
and so we have a situation come thursday where no one really wins. turkey gets the chance to show it’s still open for business but with a quality of field that just emphasises the problems it faces in attracting people to visit.
Perhaps the only people with smiles on their faces will be the tour’s rank and file, who must be struggling to believe they will be playing for so much money with so few stars in attendance.
here’s one thing, though, that simply has to be resolved going forward. Until the region is more stable, the turkish airlines Open has to be removed from this pivotal position it holds in the schedule, no matter how much money the sponsor offers.
You can’t have a Final Series event open to the top 70 players that is so unappealing to the leading performers that you have to go all the way down to 98th place to fill out the field.
It damages the credibility of the Race to Dubai and makes it feel more like a farcical series than a final one.