PGA Tour: Money vs Ambition?
I was prompted to write this following what I felt was an unnecessarily provocative piece by Iain Carter- labelling anyone who chose to play PGA Tour events over European Tour events as stay-aways. Iain’s point was that the European selection process should in no way be altered to favour plyers who play on the PGA Tour in preference to the European one, and that the European Tour have every right to use The Ryder Cup selection process as a stick to beat the US-based golfers with.
Now I don’t happen to agree with this position at all. The European Ryder Cup Team should contain the twelve golfers most able to win the Ryder Cup, but that’s not why I’m writing this. Rather I would like to give my spin on what I see as the misapprehension that every golfer from Europe (it’s mainly UK golfers, admittedly) must automatically be a money-grabbing little so-and-so and is therefore not worthy of a Ryder Cup cap.
1) The PGA Tour has more money. It can offer more in prize money. I cannot deny this is a big motivating factor in choosing to play there. But is it simply a case of wanting to line one’s own pocket?
The European Tour has struggled a lot this season due to loss of sponsorship deals etc in the global economic downturn- I gather the prizefund for the season-ending Dubai World Championship/Race to Dubai has halved this season, for instance. Given the farce that happen on the LPGA Tour in the last season or two, can you blame plaers for wanting to throw in their lot with a more finnancially secure brand? True, it seems the downturn will hit the PGA Tour (if it has not done so already) but it’s also able to weather the storm better than the European Tour is.
2) Staying with that note, you’d think listening to some people that all golfers can look forward to lucrative careers for years t come and to constantly go chasing after the Stateside bucks is just pure greed. Not true. Yes, there are examples of golfers who’ve made a massive fortune and enjoyed long careers as Touring Pros- I need not name examples- but for every one of those, there are golfers who are one minute top of their game, and then suddenly dissapear off the radar due to a loss of form or fitness (Think of David Howell- Top 20 in the world one minute, gone without a trace the next). Can in-form players really be blamed for wanting to srtike whilst the iron is hot and try their luck on the world’s most lucrative tour, when it could all all be gone tommorrow?
3) Bigger prize funds mean better fields- most of the best golfers in the world who aren’t American still play most of the time on the PGA Tour- Reteif, Ernie and Vijay may retain token Euro Tour membership but they play less over here than they do in the States, to the extent they may as well be considered PGA Tour full-timers. If you want to win the big prizes (The Majors), it often means competing with the big boys regularly, and learning to win agaimst them. Playing full time on the PGA Tour gives players the best chance of doing that.
4) If you count The Masters, The US Open, The Open, The PGA Championship, the Players, The Accenture Matchplay, The CA Champ and The Bridgestone Invitational as the eight biggest tournaments in golf (the World’s Top 50 are all invited execpt for the Accenture)- then what do all except The Open have in common? They’re played in The States! To win these evnts it may just help if you a working knowledge of American courses, American galleries, even American local rules (c.f. this year’s PGA). Even in the one event named above that isn’t American you don’t gain much by playing on the European Tour- The Open an R&A event, not a Euro Tour one. It has local rules different to the Euro Tour and is played on a type of course the European Tour rarely visits. Is it any wonder The Europeans went two decades without winning a major when they put themselves as such a disadvantage for so long? Has anyone considered that Montgomerie and Westwood might actually have won a major had they played in America more often (all Monty’s near-misses and all but one of Lee’s have come in America majors, not The Open)
Ultimately, my point is that the likes of Casey, Donald, Rose McIlroy, Harrington and whoever else decides to join then next season ( I hear both McDowell and Kaymer may be jumping ship)don’t just play there for the money, though that is doubtless a motivating factor. But if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best, and the only place to do that in modern golf is on the PGA Tour.
Sorry to waffle on. Comments please…
