How Will European Tour Keep Their Top Players Happy?

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This is a debate that Seve Ballesteros started with his idiosyncratic two-continent schedule that infuriated the competition.

Let’s face it. The European Tour has been losing star golfers to the PGA Tour at an alarming rate: Rory, McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Justin Rose, Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and more. Now, European players are asking the European Tour to reduce the number of tournaments they must play on their “home tour.” Supposedly the powers that be are considering a reduction from 13 to 11.

This discussion heated up when McIlroy was given permission to retain his playing privileges and compete in the Race to Dubai with the potential for playing only 12 tournaments in 2015, due to his summer ankle injury.

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Thirteen tournaments doesn’t sound like a lot, especially when you look at the events that count on both the PGA Tour and the European Tour. The Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA count on both as do the four WGC events. That’s eight, meaning the elite Euro Tour players only have to play FIVE actual European events right now to keep their cards. The players want that reduced to three. Three? Well, the sponsors may want a little more than that. If you were a sponsor, you would.

The European Tour goes 12 months with a break from mid-December to the second week of January. So looking at the number of events that count on both tours, it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask members to play in five events out of a 48 to 49-week season. To the rest of the world, this honestly sounds like whining, but when it’s your body flying 10,000 or 15,000 miles someplace, you’re the one who will want to do that less and less over time.

“I remember playing the European Tour, the American Tour, and then on top of that, I played in Japan and Asia and Australia and in South Africa. Well, looking at that now, were you crazy? What were you trying to achieve?” Bernhard Langer asked last spring at The Players. “I woke up, I didn’t know what time zone I was in. I didn’t even know what country I’m in at times. And it’s too much at times.”

The players who are requesting fewer events are top names. That’s not just a problem for all the tournaments, it’s also a problem when it comes to Ryder Cup. Without the top guys, the European Tour could have a hard time fielding a competitive team.

European players have, honestly, never had as much international success on the PGA Tour as they’ve enjoyed in the last decade-and-a-half. Sure there were a few, for a while. Nick Faldo. Ian Woosnam. Bernhard Langer. Sandy Lyle. But they only dipped their collective toes into the PGA Tour briefly. The reason was Seve Ballesteros Rule. With Ballesteros, the saga of the number of tournaments required for players on both sides of the Atlantic blossomed into a battle royale. That’s something Europe wants to avoid with its players.

Ballesteros was a one name player. Seve. Back in the late mid-1980s, he led the World Rankings for 61 weeks. And he was magic on the golf course. There was no lie too impossible for the young Spaniard. He could hit out of anything, any time, anywhere. He won the British Open hitting out of the car park. He won 50 times on the European Tour, the most of any player in history.

Because the European Tour did not begin until April in those days, Ballesteros liked to start his year in March in the U.S. He would play on a sponsor’s exemption and then go to the Masters and return to Europe. He’d do the same thing around the U.S. Open. All this was much to the vexation of some PGA Tour players. At least that was the undercurrent. Ballesteros, in his limited appearances, won nine times in the U.S. The perspective of some U.S. players was that Ballesteros cherry-picked the richest tournaments.

Factually speaking, in 1983, he made the cut at the Honda Classic, Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill, The Players and then went to the Masters. In 1984, he made the cut in the Honda Classic, Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill and finished third at The Players. He played the Masters but missed the cut. His typical schedule was to start at Doral, which was then the Doral Eastern Open, or Honda, play several tournaments leading up to the Masters, then return to Europe. Then he’d come back prior to the U.S. Open and return to Europe after it concluded.

One reason Ballesteros came to the states was because there were no tournaments in Europe at that time of year. The Middle East had not yet developed golf.

Ballesteros’ U.S. victories were 1978 Greater Greensboro, that year played a week before The Masters; the 1983 and 1988 Manufacturers Hanover Westchester Classics, played a week before the U.S. Open; and the 1985 USF&G Classic, sandwiched between the Masters and The Memorial.   He won the Masters in 1980 and 1983, and the British Open in 1979, 1984, and 1988.

The upshot of Ballesteros and his talent was new requirement that a golfer had to play 15 times on the PGA Tour to maintain membership. According to then PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman, it was a number Ballesteros himself had suggested. This became known as the Ballesteros Rule. The PGA Tour was even willing to waive releases from PGA Tour events for Ballesteros and other Europeans so they could play on the European Tour if they would play 15 in the U.S..

Then, apparently after agreeing to that number, Ballesteros decided that it was too many, so Beman suspended him for a year in 1985. He did not play on the PGA Tour in 1986.

”Seve Ballesteros failed to honor his commitment to play in 15 tournaments, and he was the one who recommended the 15 principle,” Beman said then to The Los Angeles Times. ”He petitioned the Tournament Policy Board to change the rule to accommodate him. That was his number and not our number.”

This system, the “Ballesteros Rule,” left European golfers with 15 in the U.S. and somewhere around nine or ten or 11 in Europe, depending on the year, which was a 24 or 25-tournament requirement.

Few golfers play 25 tournaments outside of the rookies who need to make money. Jack Nicklaus seldom played more than 19 PGA Tour events a year in his entire career.

To play both tours, with the European Tour starting in April and ending in September, under the “Ballesteros Rule,” the European players had to play almost continuously through the summer to fulfill their requirements on both sides of the pond.

Bernhard Langer remembers the situation well because it affected his career.

“I remember vividly there was five or six European players talking to Deane Beman, trying to get us to go from 15 tournaments minimum to 12 so we could keep our memberships in both tours, and it didn’t go through, so we all — it was 1989, I remember the day, and I was here, they didn’t allow us to do that, they didn’t make an exception for us, and we all resigned our membership,” he said last spring at The Players. “We all felt it was too much to go back and forth and back and forth, four, five six times a year with the time zones. You couldn’t handle it.”

Jul 20, 2015; St. Andrews, Fife, SCT; Bernhard Langer gets his picture taken with caddy Terry Holt at The Open Championship at St Andrews during the final round of the 144th Open Championship at St. Andrews – Old Course. Mandatory Credit: Ian Rutherford-USA TODAY Sports

Langer and his fellow Europeans remained, for the most part, in Europe as far as playing golf. This was a hardship for Langer because he was living in the U.S. His wife is American and so are his children.

A few years later, Europe took steps to try to retain its players. They raised their requirement to 11, but included the three U.S majors in that number. In 1999, the WGC events were folded into the required events and the number was raised to 13.

Now, newly appointed European Tour chief executive, Keith Pelley, is set to release his decision on the whether there will be a change in the number of events European Tour members are required to play. The announcement will come at the DP World Challenge.

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Will the stars get their way, or will the European Tour try to hang on to the top players for a couple more weeks each season? Will it be the Ballesteros Rule in reverse or will something be worked out to allow Europe to have its top golfers remain members of their Tour?

For a Tour that no longer plays all of it’s events on one continent, maybe some flexibility is important in keeping the European stars affiliated as official European Tour members. And if they want the big names, one advantage the European Tour has is that they can pay appearance money and routinely do.

For the individual golfers, we will have to wait to see what each one does. As Langer pointed out, getting a little more mature makes the decisions easier.

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“I remember, when I was younger, I was out of balance. Golf was everything for me, and I flew everywhere and all over the world and golf was the most important thing,” he said. “I got married and I had kids and I had other interests and I had to learn to prioritize and balance all that. But it’s all part of life and it’s a wonderful thing to do. But it takes a couple of years to figure out, okay, I can’t do this anymore.”