The European Tour…Or Is It?

A quick view of the golf scores from around the world this morning showed that American Jessica Korda had a one shot lead at the Blue Bay LPGA in China and a glimpse at the European Tour’s ISPS Handa Perth International has native Aussie John Wade tied for the lead with Thorbjorn Olesen.

The Handa marks the return of Jason Dufner back from his neck injury. Dufner was last on the course at the PGA Championship when he was forced to withdraw in August. He currently sits six shots off the lead but said he was happy to be back playing again and was a little sore from not having played in so long.

With the Euro Tour in Australia I was curious as to what their season ending schedule looked like leading up to their tour championship, the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.  

The PGA Tour has the FedEx Cup Playoffs while the European Tour has their Race to Dubai. After this week in Australia they start their Final Series of four events with the finale in Dubai.
Next week they head to China at the BMW Masters then another stop in China for the WGC-HSBC Champions. They then make a stop in Turkey for the Turkish Airlines Open and finish their 2013-2014 season at the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

So for the last six events of their season the European Tour makes one stop in Europe, Turkey.

Of all the professional golf tours the European Tour will let their players rack up the frequent flyer miles by the bunch. In fact, the European Tour may be a bit of a misnomer. A closer look at the schedule shows such a wide variety of countries that their travel agents may suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Last November (2013), yes they have wraparound seasons too (they started them) the tour opened with three tournaments in South Africa. Then a quick flight to Hong Kong before they came back to South Africa for two more stops. A few weeks in the Middle East with stops in the United Arab Emirates sandwiched around a stop in that old golfing stronghold, Qatar.

Back to the sunshine of South Africa they headed before they packed their bags and headed to some more familiar territory, Arizona. Yes, the WGC-Match Play is co-sponsored by the European and PGA Tours. So the rank and file of the European Tour actually play in the United States before ever teeing it up on a truly European course. In fact with the WGC-Cadillac played in Florida, two weeks after the Match Play those European golfers that qualified for the WGC’s play more in America than they do in Europe for the first five months of their season.

The fact is the European Tour did not set foot in Europe until their seventeenth event of the season, the NH Collection Open in Cadiz, Spain. Then they pack up and head to that historic, European city of Augusta, Georgia. Oops, that’s The Masters, right here in the good old USA. The Masters, like all the majors are listed as tour stops on both the PGA and European Tours.

Not to worry, those tried and true European Tour Professionals get back to their old stomping grounds with stops in Malaysia, China and Singapore…not quite Europe yet.

Finally, they head back to a truly European swing with the bulk of the next five months careening back and forth through mainland Europe with breaks for the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in the states.

The European Tour truly lives by the credo “go where the money is.” The wealthy countries of the Middle East were so willing to throw money at the European Tour that their season finishes in the land of sheiks and gold plated Bentleys, Dubai.

Truth be told, the European Tour has to deal with the European winter and as the PGA Tour finds warmer climates during that time so does the European Tour. They are truly a worldwide tour and here are some interesting facts about the World Tour that masquerades as the European Tour.

Of the 50 events on the schedule, not including the Ryder Cup, 17 are played in Europe. The schedule encompasses 27 different countries and I couldn’t imagine trying to calculate the miles travelled by a card carrying Euro Tour player.

The United States hosts the Euro’s on six different tournaments: the three majors and the three WGC events.

South Africa tallies the most tour stops with eight. Great Britain hosted seven tournaments with three in England, two in Scotland, one in Ireland and one in Wales.

The United Arab Emirates is a big player with three stops including the Tour Championship. China also hosts three events including a WGC.

The rest of the European travelling road show goes like this: Hong Kong 2, Malaysia 2, Spain 2, and Portugal 2. And all the rest host a single event: Singapore, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Russia, Denmark, Czech Republic, Italy, Australian, Qatar and Turkey.

The European Tour schedule is a heck of a geography test. And it works well for the tour, they go where the sponsors pony up the bucks and that’s what it is all about in professional golf.

I will say this, playing on the European Tour will give its players a broad taste of many varied corners of the world and just following the tour stops on a map is a class in advanced geography.