This happening Sunday 10 individuals will definitely be actually obtaining PGA Trip memory cards for 2025 astride their 2024 period on
the DP Globe Trip. As well as an incredibly suitable memory card it is actually also as it promises (a) getting involved in sufficient tournaments
on the PGA Trip to possess a practical possibility to keep it, as well as (b) green with envy glimpses coming from a lot of their associates.
Now there are a few ways to look at this. You look at it like guys I know from the corporate world who are incredulous that any business would give away its 10 most talented people to a rival business for free every single year, depleting their talent pool and arguably making it less likely that people, like sponsors for instance, will want to do business with them.
“We used to have some really good staff, but next year we can only offer staff who are good but not quite as good.” Hardly a great sales pitch to someone you want to part with millions of euros.
Alternatively, you look at it like the DP World Tour does and trumpet this as a shining example of the
benefits of the Strategic Alliance with the PGA Tour. You emphasise the great opportunity it offers to the players and how big an incentive it is to keep grinding away.
You back this up by pointing out that six of the class of 2023 (class size in the end nine as Adrian Meronk went straight to LIV Golf) actually kept their cards for 2024, and how that harbinger of doom (The Secret Tour Caddy in “that bloody book”) was wrong saying we’d see most of them back with tails between their legs.
And all the while, brushing any notion of this being bad for business straight under the carpet alongside last year’s DP World Tour financial statement released the other week. Jeez, it’s getting crowded under that carpet.
Or you take a more cynical view. Like I, and many of my colleagues, do which is that ultimately America as a nation rarely, if ever, acts in anything other than self-interest, and the PGA Tour (being American) is no different.
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DP World Tour-PGA Tour card scheme only benefits one party
So forget any notion you might have about these 10 cards being offered out of the goodness of their hearts, their desire to “grow the game” globally, and all that b******s. No, these were offered solely to legitimise creaming off any of the cream of European talent that didn’t make it to the PGA Tour by any other means.
Of the 10 guys who got PGA Tour cards from the DP World Tour in 2023, only four played in Abu Dhabi last week: Olesen, Meronk, Jorge Campillo and Nicolai Højgaard. Four then became three for this week’s DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, as the defending champion and Ryder Cup star Højgaard needed a top-five at Yas Links to make it inside the top 50, but finished tied for 13th.
Olesen is in Dubai thanks to a win in Ras Al Khaimah early in 2024 before heading back to the US, while Campillo had good results when he came back to play the DP World Tour in the autumn after a fairly average year on the PGA Tour. As for the other member of this illustrious trio, Meronk, he’s only there because his appeal against his fines for playing on LIV Golf is still pending.
The defending champion in Abu Dhabi (when it wasn’t a play-off event) Victor Perez couldn’t defend his title and isn’t in Dubai either, mainly because he didn’t even come near making the top 70. His compatriot Pavon likewise was good enough to win on the PGA Tour and play their Tour Championship, but didn’t qualify for the DP World Tour Play-Offs.
Ryan Fox was the other big name conspicuously absent. So, ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when 10 of your best players from a year ago end up predominantly playing their golf in the US, so by definition can’t amass any points in Europe as they ordinarily would.
Not amassing points means that qualifying for your supposed showcase end-of-season Playoff events becomes much harder than it ordinarily would be for these 10 guys, to the point where it’s, to all intents and purposes, virtually impossible.
Especially now every tournament on the DP World Tour schedule has basically the same Race to Dubai points on offer. Currently whether someone should have seen this coming, or whether they did but considered this a risk worth taking, is another matter. But either way what you end up with in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are actually weaker fields that these events probably deserve given that they are actually marquee Playoffs.
With these players added to the PGA Tour roster will come extra eyeballs and increased exposure outside of the US. Golf fans follow their favourites no matter what tour they play on and 10 more “Europeans” means potentially thousands more “European” eyes on the coverage, on the sponsors’ logos, or whatever else these eyes fall on.
All of it is to the commercial benefit of the PGA Tour. But whether you think giving these 10 cards away is a good thing or a bad thing, ultimately it made nine of my colleagues an awful lot more money than they will possess made caddying in Europe this season.
So maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.
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What do you make of the DP Globe Trip-PGA Trip partnership? Say to NCG on X!