The DP World Tour Thread

Valderdrama more like ! Soderberg 7 at a par 5 when 2 ahead

Strangely his impressive display on the full tour may cost him a tour card.He needs to be in circa the top 40 on the Challenge tour to get into playoffs for 20 plus cards and his 2 weeks away meant while playing great he made no headway on Challenge tour.Seeems unfair a top ten on the full Tour doesnt count towards being eligible to play for a Tour card.Might regret not staying on Challenge tour although I am not sure there were events those weeks.I would imagine he needs a win next week to qualify as only went up 19 places with joint 3rd today.

I'm delighted my 20 minute drive to the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship at Abu Dhabi Golf Club has been shortened to 10 minutes with its move to Yas Links

January 20th to the 23rd

Does anyone know how many players will make it to the Race to Dubai finale in two weeks time?

I have been unable to find any answer to this question on the European Tour website. According to Wikipedia, it’s limited to the top 50 in the Race to Dubai, but the entry list for last season’s event shows the entry list as being made up of the top 60 available players from the Race to Dubai rankings plus 5 other players - 4 from the top 75 in the OWGR plus a reserve.

Said this earlier in the year, it's a joke, just look at Richard Bland 24 events played 11 ,top 10s and a win and he no chance of winning R2D heading into last couple of events of the season.

Case in point is that Paul casey has played 9 events had 1 win and 4 top 10s but is ahead of bland.

I get them putting the weighting onto the bigger events but its completely out of whack to the point that winning an event like the Cazoo classic is pretty meaningless in the context of the R2D.

They are rewarding the "big players" by not playing many events

Wonder does the new deal kinda kill the Ryder Cup a little bit?

Good question. But it hasn’t really been PGA Tour vs European Tour for a number of years now. There are too many European players who play mainly on the PGA Tour. They may have to change the rule about having to be a member of the European Tour (sorry, DP World Tour) in order to be eligible to represent Europe in the Ryder Cup. And the selection process may change to be based solely on World Ranking points. This will further reduce the incentive for the top European players to play in Europe, but I guess they must figure it’s a price worth paying.

In other news, I note that the Irish Ooen is confirmed for Mount Juliet from June 30th to July 3rd, the week before the Scottish Open. Not likely to have a strong field, given the fact that it’s not even a links course.

I don’t understand the logic behind including the Barbasol Championship and Barracuda Championship as events counting towards both tours. These events are run in opposition to the Scottish Open and The Open Championship. What the heck is that all about?

The Double Penetration World Tour.

Can you get a Hole in Two?

They are destroying the European tour. There has never been anybody there with a bit of vision and balls to make it a great tour.

The way this is going there'll be very little golf in Europe outside of challenge tour events in a decade.

I see there is no event after the first week in March until the middle of April.

No event early December to late January either.

What would you do to make the tour great?

I'd have tiered events. Tier 1 events would give you double points toward R2D.

Tier 2 would get you 1.5 times the points and then the rest get you regular points.

There'd be ten tier 1 and ten tier 2 events.

Likes of PGA championship, Scottish open, Italian Open, Andulucia Masters, Abu Dhabi HSBC, Dubai desert classic, Saudi International, British Masters, Irish Open, Alfred Dunhill links, European Open, Nedbank challenge and BMW international would all be in contention for tier 1.

Wales open, Portugal Masters, Open de Espana, Open de France, Alfred Dunhill, Indian Open and Australia PGA Championship would be in tier 2.

That's just off the top of my head, there may be tournaments I've forgotten about.

You bring in sponsors like in the US for things like the risk/reward hole in every tournament. You improve your stats for tournaments and players like proximity to hole etc. stats and have full text commentary of every shot on your website like the PGA tour.

You regularly profile your best golfers and up and comers from countries who don't have a rich tradition in golf.

You make it more accessible in every way to draw in more viewers and fans.

Selling out to the Arabs has destroyed the integrity of the tour. Appointing a muppet from Canada who knows nothing about golf or Europe as the main decision maker for the direction of European golf has put the last nail in the coffin.

Haven't really being paying attention to the whole DP thing bar the billing and I watched Sky earlier and they were proclaiming it to be the best thing ever, which immediately got me suspicious. They obviously have the rights.

What does this mean for regular European players coming through, that haven't had the grandeur of US College Scholarships?

From the way I am seeing it, the future Stenson's, Kaymar, Molinari's will struggle to get opportunities at decent events.

I can see a lot younger guys coming through looking to get onto the Sunshine tour or the Asia Tour (which looks like its getting revamped too)

We can always believe the talent will naturally come through but there are late developers. And professional golf is an expensive business to navigate.

Sometimes it's better to do nothing if you don't have any good ideas. Golf is about tradition and respect. He has tried to make it more entertaining with Mickey mouse events to attract new followers but forgot about the people who love golf and why they love it.

Jon Rahm not bothered to go to Dubai this week and I salute him. I think the DP tour will make the PGA tour even stronger and I expect the world's best players who don't need blood money to distance themselves from this tour more and more over the coming years.

What could Pelly do? He could have not officially killed the European tour.