What a World Tour Might Look Like.

 

A World Golf Tour

 

 

What could professional golf look like?

 

With the recent events of potential mergers and purchases of the PGA Tour and DP/European Tour, the opportunity now arises to re-imagine a worldwide golf tour.

 

The first question is what is the purpose of professional golf? There is the 4 majors, which are championships looking to find who the best player is, while the rest of professional golf is essentially entertainment looking to captivate, enthrall and delight fans and golfers.

 

What do the golf fans and viewers want? They want to see the best players in the world playing against each other as well as local underdogs battling out against the giants of the game.

 

How do we get this to happen? We look at how often the best players play, what's the optimal number of events for them to play in, create an off season, play no more than 2-3 weeks in a row and have 1-2 weeks off between events. Having less events creates a scarcity factor generating more interest in the events that do happen. Have worldwide events, not just stuck in one country and have the ability to climb the ladder to get into the World Tour.

 

I'd like to see 24 events, 4 majors and 20 World Tour Events, taking place in the Americas, Europe, Middle East/Africa and Australasia. Base the 20 World events on National Opens and well established events. I'd have 9 events in the Americas, such as the LA Open, Western Open, Texas Open, Mexican Open, Canadian Open, Brazilian Open etc, 5 events in Europe, Scottish Open, French Open, Spanish Open etc, 3 events in Middle East/Africa, Dubai Open, South African Open etc and 3 events in Australasia, Japan Open, Australian Open etc. The events would rotate from country to country from year to year, so the Argentinian Open would be a world tour event one year and the Brazilian Open the next.

 

What would the fields of these events comprise of? I'd have the top 100 in the world from the previous year contracted to the World Tour to guarantee that the best players are playing in all events, contracts ranging from $100,000 to $500,000 per event ($2 million to $10 million per year) depending on the world ranking and prize money would be earned on top of the contracts.

 

The World Events would have fields of 156, Top 100 in the world from the previous year, 10 of the highest in the current rankings not already eligible, 40 from the local tour where the event is on and 6 Monday qualifying spots every week. Cut to 60 and ties after 2 rounds. Every week would have great stories to tell, from the best players in the world fighting it out down the back nine to the local pro getting through the Monday qualifying and more. 

 

Notice there would be no sponsor exemptions, every one is in by merit. Also, no limited field events and no no cut events.

 

Underneath the World Tour would be three more divisions of professional tours, division one would be the PGA Tour, European Tour, Asian Tour, division two would be the Korn Ferry Tour, Challenge Tour, Sunshine Tour, Japan Tour, Australian Tour etc, and division three would be a selection of mini tours from around the world.

 

From division one the players would look to gain ranking points to get into the top 100, as well as get to play in the world tour events in their region, division two tours would have 20-30 golfers getting promotion to division one tours each year and division three tours would have 10 golfers getting promoted from each tour to division 2 tours. 

 

Each division one and two tour would have 30 events, no over exposure of these tours too and division 3 tours would have 20 events which are funded properly. A division 3 tour would have $10 million funding, ie 20 events of $500,000 per event, not the current situation where all mini tour players are essentially broke and unable to earn any sort of living while playing on them.

 

That is what I would do if I was commissioner of a potential World Tour.

 

What would you do?