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Following the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in the next month, a significant milestone in the strategic partnership between the European circuit and the PGA Tour will be realized. The top 10 players in the Race to Dubai, who are not already exempt, will secure PGA Tour cards for the upcoming year.
Eddie Pepperell is one of the golfers who does not understand this policy of the DP World Tour and does not understand where they get such decisions from. Pepperell stressed that it was a ‘disaster’ for the DP World Tour. “I personally think it’s a disaster for the DP World Tour.
I can’t think of any good business that tries to not retain its clients, just give the best ones away, that makes no sense to me. But from a player’s perspective who all have, frankly, ambitions to play at the biggest stage, which now clearly is the PGA Tour, it’s good for them”.
– he said, as quoted by golfmonthly.com
Eddie Pepperell is confused
Primarily, Pepperell cannot understand why the DP World Tour would ‘give away’ its best players and be significantly weakened, when those same players can play for the DP World Tour and raise the level of competition.
“How long can both those be in existence, because to me it doesn’t seem sustainable that the Tour can continue to operate successfully while giving away its best players, but equally the players think it’s a good thing.
It’s extremely formal now to the point where next year or the year after players are all going to be falling back into a very high category on the DP World Tour anyway so there really is no incentive next year for these guys to play any tournaments on the DP World Tour other than their minimum events, which I just can’t get my head around as a strategy commercially from the DP World Tour”.
Pepperell put a special emphasis on money, which obviously plays an important role in the whole story. “I guess it’s in return, frankly, from all the investment that the PGA Tour are making, and to be clear that is going to be well into the hundreds and hundreds of millions across a five-year period, so the PGA Tour clearly want to see some return, part of the return is getting some very good European players”.
