At this point a little history lesson might be in order. In the early to mid 1990s Greg Norman was involved in a serious bid to create a World Tour for the top international golfers. It scared the heck out of the established tours, so America, Europe, South Africa, Australia and Japan got together to form the International Federation of PGA Tours to stifle Norman's plans. The Asian Tour joined the Federation in 1999, the same year that the World Golf Championships (WGCs) were started as a series of joint-sanctioned tournaments that would allow the world's best players to compete against each other at a level one step down from the Majors. The original idea was that those championships should be played all around the world and for awhile they were, but the dominance of the mighty PGA Tour means they are all now played in America with the exception of the HSBC Champions in China, which started out as a tri-sanctioned European, Asian and China Golf Association venture but has grown into a full-blown WGC event. In the last few years practically any organisation with "Tour" in its name has also joined the Federation, although the organising committee is still drawn from the founding members. Are you still with me?
It's a cumbersome organisation that grew out of a negative. Its validity has been thrown into sharp relief by the decision of the PGA Tour to unilaterally change the dates of the Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone (one of the original WGCs) to a new spot in early July that clashes with the French Open, one of Europe's oldest and most venerable national Opens. This has happened because next year's Olympic Games has affected the schedules, but it's been done very much against Europe's wishes and in a bold move, one of Mr Pelley's first decisions has been to declare that next year's Bridgestone Invitational will not be sanctioned by the European Tour and won't therefore count towards The Race to Dubai, nor will it count for Ryder Cup points.
It's handbags at dawn time and a high-risk move by David, whose sling only has small pebbles. Many of Europe's top players who regularly play in America will no doubt still want to play a big tournament on the PGA Tour, but there will be considerable pressure on them to support Europe by playing in Paris, particularly as it's the course upon which the Ryder Cup will be played in 2018. It's quite conceivable that there will be extra inducements such as double points, or perhaps it could even count as two qualifying tournaments for the US-based Europeans to play a minimum of 13 tournaments in their home continent to keep their Tour cards. Interesting times ahead methinks, with Goliath unlikely to lie down quietly.
Meanwhile, Moscow and the Russian Open calls. Now where does Russia fit in to all this? At least the mighty dollar's going to buy me a whole lot more rubles than it would have done awhile ago.
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