Tiger Woods dumps Torrey Pines for Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship for mammoth appearance fee
Golf critics are still trying to figure out the reason behind Tiger Woods’ decision to play at Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship instead of his favourite hunting ground, Torrey Pines on the PGA Tour.
The answer may lie behind the controversial appearance money paid to the former world number one for his participation in one of the most anticipated event on the European Tour calendar.
Woods has won seven times on the South Course at Torrey Pines which will be the venue of this week’s Farmers Insurance, including the 2008 US Open.
He will be starting his current season from an alien turf, where he has never played before and hopes to continue with his winning form.
Woods landed the Chevron World Challenge at the end of the closing season on PGA, a victory that came after a gruesome lapse of two years.
He performed well in the Australian Open as well as the coveted President’s Cup later in the year to break out of his struggling form.
36-year-old Woods will be facing some of the trailblazing golfers from all over the world, including the top four in the world, all of them in their blistering form for the moment.
Farrell Evans, ESPN.com senior golf writer says, “With seven wins on the South course at Torrey Pines, it's interesting that Tiger wouldn't start his season at a place where he has had phenomenal success. But the Abu Dhabi event will have one of the strongest fields of the year. The most important thing is that Tiger plays competitive golf”.
Regardless of all the justifications Woods might churn out to validate his participation in Abu Dhabi, it is more than evident that the mammoth appearance money has played a significant role in persuading him to join the field in Middle East.
Another famous ESPN writer Michael Collins states,
“They play for less than half the purses on a weekly basis but more and more we see stronger fields than at PGA Tour events. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why”.
Although the purses at the PGA Tour events are considerably larger than its counterpart, the European Tour, the controversial appearance money continues to haunt the credibility of players all over the world.
The European Tour normally attracts the major chunk of high profile players by luring them in with huge under-the-table offers.
Iit has often created controversies when the players deliberately fail to make the halfway cut and fly back home.
Despite the player’s apathy towards the event, event managers at HSBC are more than happy to have bigger names in the field. The spectator turn out at the course is expected to be unprecedented and is likely to cross the 40,000 mark the event witnessed last year.
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