Golf Special Report: Merging the American and the European Tour is a tough call
Golf’s popularity evolved dramatically in the late 90's and has lately become a global sport. According to critics, this global sport needs a global stage and requires only one thing - a classic golf tour.
This is easier said than done, the classic golf tour thus recommended requires arranging a tour that merges the European and the American PGA Tours and is the only thing that can give golf some serious recognition. But where many golfers would want to see
golf on a global stage which it so aptly deserves, they can’t think past the basic Golf Tour problems.
The mere thought of organizing a Golf Tour seems much of a dream than reality. The problem is, almost all of the players’ appear at either the American Tour or the European Tour and bringing in a new set-up other than these tours is like disturbing approximately
ninety percent of these golfers. The change would be huge and so will be the commotion.
Currently Golf Tour is considering two of its biggest problems, one is the schedules and the other is the unsanctioned left-overs.
If we consider the first issue, it can be better understood if we recall the time frame of January 28th to the 31st this year. The PGA Tour had The Farmers Insurance Open taking place at Torrey Pines and held high fame due to the presence of Phil
Mickelson and Tiger Woods. With the Insurance Open including players of top form, the European Tour had the Qatar Masters being carried out which is one of the most trendy events in Europe.
Was the schedule too much for the golfers? The answer is rather obvious-yes.
We must realise that these are just the European and PGA Tours mentioned here. If January 28th to the 31st had the PGA and the European Tour going on, consider another event taking place by the another Tour somewhere. The Japanese Tour, the Australasia Tour
and God know how many Tours would still need to be considered before organizing a Golf Tour of such a big scale.
Therefore, the uproar is bound to occur once the Golf Tour starts merging the European and The PGA Tours that takes place continuously throughout the year for 48 weeks. Of course, many would say it’s an easy task to carry out, but the schedules of these
tours are too jamming packed to suggest anything.
By the way, those of you who know Phil Mickelson as a lefty should also be aware of the fact that he only plays left-handed, our well-known lefty is actually a right handed golfer who only learnt to use left handed golf clubs after mirroring his father’s
golf swing.
Now coming to Golf Tour’s second problem, sanctioning, if the Golf Tour merges these tours, half of them would be left unofficial and would thus leave more than half of the players confused about which event to appear in. This means that if such a situation
happens, more than 75 percent of the events would be left unauthorized.
Provided the conditions, nobody would sponsor the unsanctioned event since they wouldn’t want to waste their money on something that isn’t endorsed by the Golf Tour on the first place. If this doesn’t happen, these events would have to forget about hosting
an event with top class professionals in it.
Therefore arranging a Golf Tour is a tough call, but somebody had got to do it. Where schedules and sanctioning hover over the golf arena, several other satellite issues are also bothering the decision and is currently being mulled over, such as where must
these events go once a Golf Tour is established? Which of these events will be fully sanctioned by the Golf Tour? And which of these should be ignored all together?
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