Golf needs a world tour ...so let’s make it happen
THEY introduced music on to the driving range at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship last week and as the players made their way to the first tee. Everywhere you look in golf right now, the times they are a-changin’.
Over the past 15 months we’ve seen new CEOs installed on the European and PGA Tours plus the governing body at St Andrews and they’re all anxious to leave an impression.
Led by some inspired pieces on social media, Europe is going for a cool feel, while in America a new format will be introduced with a fourball tournament taking place in New Orleans in May. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club are presently briefing the players on some eye-opening proposals for rules changes starting in 2020.
It would be wrong to knock any of these ideas, if only for the well-meaning intent behind them. In some instances, they’re having the desired effect.
However, if you can feel a ‘but’ coming on, then here it is: where is the visionary who’s going to make the change the pro game really needs to bring it in line with 21st century thinking and organise a world tour?
It’s all very well the PGA and European Tours jutting for supremacy but at some point they’re surely going to have to realise the real competition is not actually each other but every other sport that’s fighting for attention.
Imagine if they pooled their resources and put together a schedule comprising around 22 events on the model of F1? Picture the reaction of blue-chip sponsors if they were offered the top 100 players in the world playing against each other twice a month in various locations around the world?
In an instant, events like the Australian, South African, French, Scottish and Irish Opens would recapture their old lustre and then some.
It’s 20 years now since Greg Norman proposed something similar but it’s an idea that surely has to see the light of day over the next decade if golf is to remain a high-profile sport. Talk off the record to some of the sport’s most powerful movers and shakers and many want to see it happen.
Look at the alternative and the run of current events on the PGA Tour which reads: the CareerBuilder Challenge, the Farmers Insurance Open, the Waste Management Open and the Genesis Open. How on earth do you sell those to the average sports fan?
Wouldn’t the job be much easier if the last of those four events went back to being called the Los Angeles Open taking place in Hollywood with everyone showing up?
Last week we had one of the sport’s most loyal sponsors HSBC suffering badly when Rory McIlroy (below) had to pull out of their tournament at the last minute. The impact, of course, would be far less if they could pour their largesse into a world tour event taking place in Abu Dhabi each January. How much longer will they pour millions into the sport if it doesn’t happen?
Of course there would be logistical nightmares as the tours sort out the Premier League events and then decide what happens to the rest. But it should be possible to come up with something that ensures the game has a regular piece of the action on sport’s top table while maintaining interest for the hardcore fans at other events. So, who’s the visionary who sees the big picture rather than just the window dressing?