A sandtrap which may save Europe

A £5million prize fund for the European Tour’s new season-ending spectacular and the £5m bonus pool at the climax to the Race to Dubai means the November date is in their diaries in red ink, underlined and with arrows the length of javelins pointing at it. 

Justin Rose, runner-up at Muirfield Village, Ohio, on Sunday, and Paul Casey have already hinted that they will alter their transatlantic schedules next year to ensure they are a part of it – and others are likely to follow.

So far so good for the European Tour. The trick now is to harness the magnetism of the Gulf gold with the pressing need to bolster struggling events closer to home. 

Last month’s Irish Open was a case in point. An event which 15 years ago read like a Who’s Who of golf when Nick Faldo was winning his third successive title, failed to pull in the top names even with a prize fund of £2m on offer. It might be a ‘fifth Major’ to Padraig Harrington but it is relatively small beer for his chums in the world’s top 50. 

The Wales Open was helped by the presence of the Open champion at the weekend but, in terms of stardust, the field thinned out considerably beyond Harrington.

In between came a healthy turnout of Europe’s great and good at the BMW PGA Championship but that should be taken as read given that it is the European Tour’s flagship event.

The Tour has relatively few sticks with which to beat its members into playing. This year, the most significant is the carrot of Ryder Cup selection.

The more events the top Europeans play, the more points they can accrue towards the Order of Merit standings and the more chance they have to make Faldo’s team for Valhalla.

However, the fact that the leading five Europeans will be supplemented by five more from the world rankings does little to persuade players straddling the Atlantic to involve themselves more over here.

Rose’s notable achievement in winning the Order of Merit in 2007 was tinged with embarrassment because he played just 12 European Tour events, only one more than the minimum needed to qualify for Valderrama. As that included four Majors and the three World Golf Championship events, sightings of him in Europe were a rarity.  

The European No1 played just six events on the Continent last year and this year he has cut back even further. His present schedule for 2008 includes only four. Tournament committee member Colin Montgomerie said: “It was great for Justin to win the Order of Merit but we have to encourage our top players to play more in Europe. You can win the Order of Merit without hardly playing in Europe, which doesn’t seem quite right.”

The committee’s latest suggestion is to keep the minimum to qualify for the Dubai spectacular at 11 events next year but make certain European-based tournaments mandatory within that figure. Co-sanctioned events in Asia would no longer count towards it.

This way, if a player wants to poke his snout into the trough at the conclusion of the Order of Merit, he will have to pay his dues closer to home first.

Players can still enter the globally sanctioned events – and many will with only the season’s top 60 invited to compete in Dubai – but they will also be required at key European events.

It may be ironic that the salvage act for some of Europe’s grandest golfing institutions should come from the Arabian desert; but if it works, the ends will have justified the means.

* Steve Elkington, the Australian Major winner whose last victory came in 1999, has decided to increase his tournament workload. Asked why, he answered: “My son, who’s 11, asked me where I bought all my trophies.” 

* Tiger Woods hopes to make his comeback from knee surgery in the US Open at Torrey Pines later this month.