Editor’s Letter
NEW WORLD ORDER KENT GRAY kent.gray@motivate.ae Twitter: @KentGrayGolf / @GolfDigestME
Y
OU’VE COME to the right place
for world class golf. The Middle East that is. No matter how the increasingly fractious, multifaceted battle for professional golf eventually shakes out around the world, it seems the region cannot lose. Whether it is the PGA Tour-European Tour alliance, the mooted LIV Golf Investments start-up league, LIV’s confirmed investment in the Asian Tour, or perhaps even the Premier Golf League (PGL), the Middle East is helping (or has in the case of the PGL) reshape the pro game. The upshot, whichever way the cards fall, is a plethora of tournaments for fans to enjoy in our increasingly vital part of the golfing world. For starters, the newly rebadged DP World Tour – you may remember it as the European Tour – will start the 2022 calendar year (in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 20 to be exact) with five events in a tweaked Desert Swing. It includes a new $2 million event in Ras Al Khaimah and before that the upgrading of the Dubai Desert Classic to $8 million Rolex Series status alongside Abu Dhabi. By the time the circuit returns to Dubai for the 14th DP World Tour Championship next November, the DP World brand will have traversed 47 events in 27 countries – and a record $10 million purse will await at the 48th and final event at JGE. Over on the fiscally emboldened Asian Tour, the 2022 season will start at the upgraded, $5 million Saudi International, once a Euro Tour star puller. In addition to the big names now en-route to Royal Greens Golf & Country Club, fans can expect at least one of the 10 new premier events bolted onto the Asian Tour schedule - courtesy of a $200 million, 10-year investment by LIV Golf- to be played in the Middle East. Don’t be surprised if at least three MENA Tour events will also be aligned to the Asian Development Tour, perhaps as a precursor to a full merger of the two feeder circuits.
8 golfdigestme.com | december 2021
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan (left) and European Tour group Chief Executive Keith Pelley share a joke.
If either the LIV Golf-aligned start-up league or the PGL gets off the ground, and that is a big if, events in the Middle East are also guaranteed. They might even bring refreshingly innovative formats. If there is any criticism of all of the events previously mentioned it is that they are of the 72-hole strokeplay, cookie-cutter variety. That’s not fundamentally a bad thing but variety is the spice of life – and
perhaps the only way to attract new, younger audiences to the game. Increasing purses at events that remain exactly the same – tournaments that haven’t previously guaranteed the best players showing up - simply kicks the can down the road. Perhaps the PGA Tour will provide some much-needed zest with a series of lucrative, limited field, no cut events for the game’s biggest names in the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Asia. They’d reportedly be played during the U.S. fall (a period where PGA Tour TV ratings for the post FedEx Cup playoff and pre-Christmas break
