DUBAI — There were 8,340 miles between the golf tournaments on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour this week. These days, we’re used to pro golf spread apart. These days, we’re looking for signs of that distance shrinking.
In Dubai, there was Rory McIlroy, asserting the future of pro golf should be a global product unencumbered by one tour versus another tour — a future that would extend to the far reaches of the planet. Something like the Champions League in soccer, a single league that would represent the pinnacle of the sport, collecting the best from everywhere into one place.
In Palm Springs, California, there was Patrick Cantlay talking his responsibility as a director on the PGA Tour Policy Board — and how that responsibility is to the PGA Tour membership. He’s a leader on the biggest tour on the planet, no doubt. But the only tour? Not these days.
In Palm Springs, California, there was Patrick Cantlay talking his responsibility as a director on the PGA Tour Policy Board — and how that responsibility is to the PGA Tour membership. He’s a leader on the biggest tour on the planet, no doubt. But the only tour? Not these days.
Over the last 12 months, McIlroy and Cantlay have been at odds both on the course and off. But both are similar in the sense that they’re leaders during a moment of supreme opportunity. The investment negotiations deciding the Tour’s future have progressed at a slower-than-expected pace largely due in part to the demands of its player directors. They hold a considerable amount of power. Whether they want to soup up the status quo or initiate an international golf revolution is a debate that makes a harmless January week like this past one so fascinating.
In Dubai, they played for $8.5 million. In Palm Springs, $8.4 million. In Dubai there were four of the top 15 players in the world. In Palm Springs, five of the top 15. In Dubai, we saw an event created out of thin air 35 years ago on a course sprouted from the desert sand. In Palm Springs, there’s now 64 years of history, but something quite visually similar — an impossibly lush course in the middle of the desert, lacking only Dubai’s dramatic skyline. At various points in each of their histories, both events have been named the Desert Classic.
But rather than run in parallel, what might this week have looked like if there was just one premier golf tournament? Would it have been better for the game’s bottom line to have McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton playing in the California sun, or for Cantlay, Scottie Scheffler and Justin Thomas to tee it in the Middle East? And when those six all congregate in Orlando for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, would it be better for Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau to join them rather than play that same week in … Hong Kong?
