In what may be the most boneheaded decision of all time from the DP Tour Commissioner, the Top 10 from the DP World Tour automatically get cards to the PGA Tour.
Imagine the Top 10 players every year leaving whatever ‘Major’ Tour you support?!
What is the incentive to watch this Tour anymore? The good players get one season to be seen then adiós. I feel for European viewers who won’t be up at 1am in the morning to watch the PGA Tour.
I personally rate the decision to change the name from European Tour to DP World Tour as worse.
I watched a lot of euro tour growing up (growing up in the states) and am also saddened by its present state. The timing of Euro golf is great for North Americans but the converse does not hold.
Hopefully this is a sign that the two tours will do a better job collaborating from a scheduling standpoint, and that there will be more exciting events in Europe where all the top Euro guys and Americans fly over.
It is what it is, Euro Tour is Korn Ferry Tour #2 for the foreseeable future. But I do see some interesting possibilities
I would like to see Top 50 European Tour players get more cracks in the PGA Tour events. I’d prefer that to seeing 20+ players in funky exemption categories miss the cut by 10+ shots
Maybe the Rolex Series can become the equivalent of PGA Tour Europe, get a couple dozen regular PGA Tour players to play there regularly and have them count towards the 15 events while not requiring an overseas release
Also, how much money would the Asian Tour have to pump into the International Series to get DP regulars to play a handful of events there? Would $3M purses do the job? Or do they need to go to $5-6M? There is probably a tipping point somewhere and we’re not far from it