European Tour: British Masters Preview and Hero Challenge Recap

Once one of the European Tour’s staple events, the British Masters is in just its second year back on the schedule.

Tension is starting to build as we near the European Tour‘s upcoming Race to Dubai Final Series, which kicks off in just three weeks. Many notables names have opted to tune up for that stretch by playing an old classic, the British Masters.

One of the European Tour’s original events, the tournament was held almost yearly from the 1940s until 2008, when it went on hiatus. The list of winners, which includes Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo, is a testament to the strong fields it used to host. The tournament returned last year, and the winner, then-21-year-old Matthew Fitzpatrick, may have offered a glimpse at one of the next in line to ascend to the throne of English golf.

A win for him this week would make him the youngest player in European Tour history to win a tournament in consecutive years since Nick Faldo did it at the BMW PGA Championship in 1980.

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Held this year at The Grove in Chandlers Cross in Hertfordshire, many seasoned golfers will remember the venue from when it hosted the 2006 WGC-American Express Championship (now the WGC-Mexico Championship).

That was the event where Tiger Woods made eagle on the par 5 18th in each of his first three rounds en route to a win, a feat so impressive to the folks at The Grove that they gave him three separate plaques in the fairway commemorating where each approach shot was struck.

With that nugget aside, there are 12 others from that field who can dust off their 10-year-old yardage book this week, including tournament host Luke Donald. He fared the best of those 12 a decade ago, tying for sixth at 11-under.

Other notable Englishmen in this week’s field include Fitzpatrick, Andrew “Beef” Jonhston, Lee Westwood, Chris Wood, Danny Willett and Tyrrell Hatton. Also notable is the absence of Justin Rose, a part of his eight week sabbatical due to lingering effects from the back injury he suffered back in May at the Players Championship. He fought admirably through the summer in a gold medal effort at the Olympics and for team Europe at the Ryder Cup, so I imagine English fans will politely allow him to recover.

They may be less forgiving towards another Englishman who’s playing well these days, Paul Casey. The PGA Tour member elected to play in the season-opening Safeway Open in California instead.

With other big names like Graeme McDowell, Victor Dubuisson and Shane Lowry in the mix, an exciting few days are in store. In the grand scheme of things, however, the Hero Challenge, held at The Grove on Tuesday night, could have bigger ramifications.

With portions of the course illuminated under the floodlights, 2,200 fans were treated to a spectacle rarely seen in the sport of golf.

The inaugural Hero Challenge, not to be confused with the PGA Tour’s Hero World Challenge, featured a bracket-style match play tournament with eight golfers. Several big names showed up, including Donald, Johnston and Lowry.

Beginning at 7:30 p.m. local time, each “match” was really just one hole, a concocted 156-yard hole that goes over The Grove’s 18th. The lower score advanced, with the shot closest to the pin deciding any tiebreakers. It’s hard to imagine such theatrics (i.e. tee boxes with flamethrowers surrounding them) determining the winner of a traditional stroke play event, but it certainly appeared that everyone was having a blast. Several players weighed in afterward on social media, including Beef:

Oh my that was wicked. I had so much fun. Defo gotta do it again
— Andrew 'Beef' Johnston (@BeefGolf) October 11, 2016

Fiery Frenchman Alexander Levy ended up winning the event, along with £10,000 for charity. He also won a real, meat-and-potatoes European Tour stroke play event in a playoff just last month. The two events featured different kinds of pressure, but Levy certainly had the adrenaline going at the Hero Challenge like he did a few weeks back.

“That was a lot of fun,” Levy told the media afterward. “I said to Alex Noren, I felt more pressure there than in the playoff in Germany, which is ridiculous.

“It was amazing to see the crowds and everyone enjoying it,” he continued. “Golf needs something like this and it is a great idea.”

The playful banter, pyrotechnics and amped up crowd made for a festive atmosphere. In future iterations, the format is likely to shift and adapt to feedback from fans and players, but it beautifully mixed adrenaline and pressure with light-hearted competitiveness in this first test run. Players had to lock in for one meaningful swing while also being able to laugh it up with the rest of the onlookers in between shots.

Completed in just one hour, the Hero Challenge seems primed to fulfill the European Tour’s desire to put on more compact events in order to capture fans with attention spans unequipped to plod through multiple hours of stroke play in a given week. Along with that, primetime golf is virtually nonexistent. The Hero Challenge could expose a market inefficiency while injecting new experiences into the golf landscape.

The European Tour also deftly utilized Facebook Live to broadcast the event worldwide:

Next: Safeway Open Fantasy Picks

Who will come away with the win this week at the British Masters? Will side events like the Hero Challenge catch on? Let us know in the comments and keep it here at PGN for more European Tour updates.

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