I’VE always been fairly pessimistic. In fact, my defeatist attitude kicked in just there, halfway through typing the word “pessimistic” as I was convinced I’d spell it incorrectly.
Presumably, this air of head shaking, sighing gloominess will accompany me to the airport later this week when I hop on a flight for the first time in three years and nervously anticipate the pilot coming over the intercom to inform all and sundry that “if you look out over the right wing, you’ll shortly see the fiery remnants of the left wing” before we corkscrew towards the sea at 1000mph.
Nothing like getting into the holiday spirit, eh? Talking of taking flight, Bearsden golfer Ewen Ferguson is certainly on an upward trajectory that should just about register on the gizmos, gadgets and contraptions of air traffic control.
His second DP World Tour win of the season at the ISPS Handa World Invitational saw him become the first Scot since Paul Lawrie in 2012 to earn two victories in the same campaign. With confidence oozing from every pore, Ferguson will be fancying his chances of adding to that haul.
In just his 50th start on the main circuit, the 26-year-old is a double champion. His jubilant smile when he got his hands on the trophy was the kind of gleaming beam you’d get when the Bee Gees emerged from a scale and polish.
Winning on the tour is hard enough. Doing it twice is no mean feat. And completing a wire-to-wire victory? That’s terrific front-running golf. In the aftermath of his breakthrough triumph in the Qatar Masters earlier in the campaign, I caught up with his coach, the canny, well-respected Jamie Gough.
“He won’t be a one-hit wonder,” declared Gough at the time. “He’ll be a very good player for a long time. You don’t want to tempt fate but I’d back him to win again this year and get into the top 100 in the world.”
Predictions in this unpredictable game, of course, can be a fool’s errand but Ferguson has backed up his coach’s confident claim with a second success. As for clambering into the world’s top-100 and beyond?
Well, that has just got a bit trickier for Ferguson – currently ranked No.168 – and his ilk.
A change to the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) came into effect last week. Without guddling too much in the mathematical weeds, ranking points are now determined wholly on strength of field. Last week, for instance, Ferguson picked up just eight OWGR points for his win, three times less than he earned for his victory in Qatar. In that event, Ferguson’s 24 points were a stipulated minimum for a DP World Tour event even if the strength of the field could actually be lower than that number. Are you still following? Or even still awake?
Essentially, then, this new calculation means that the tours with weaker fields will find it tougher to award as many ranking points as they had done previously. In the fairness of competition, that seems understandable. There’s no reason, after all, why events on various tours should get guaranteed points regardless of the strength of the field. Given that the DP World Tour plays second fiddle to the PGA Tour, however, you can appreciate the concerns of the rank-and-file campaigners trying to clamber into the higher echelons.
While getting into the nuts and bolts of the OWGR equations and formulas can lead to the same kind of glazed look you’d get if you tried to explain the Analytic Continuation of the Factorial to a household pet, this change has been viewed as a significant blow to the DP World Tour.
As the PGA Tour grows richer, more powerful and with world ranking points loaded in its favour, the old European circuit has to muddle on. And goodness knows what further impacts the LIV Golf recruitment drive will have as the global professional game continues its civil war. When he took charge at Wentworth a few years ago, the DP World Tour’s chief executive, Keith Pelley, bullishly stated that his circuit could be a “viable alternative” to the all-powerful PGA Tour.
Yes, there are a number of events of genuine significance and clout on the schedule but the PGA Tour monopoly – a stronghold that’s now being attacked by LIV Golf – continues to downgrade the DP World Tour.
While gaining hefty world ranking points is going to be harder for the regulars on this side of the pond, at least there is more scope for players to make the step on to the PGA Tour. As of next season, the top-10 on the final DP World Tour rankings, who don’t already have PGA Tour status, will earn a card for the lucrative US circuit. It’s a decent carrot on the stick but one that will accelerate the talent drain. If you get an opportunity to savour the land of milk and honey on the PGA Tour – and earn more world ranking points – you’re not going to come back to Europe and play in the D+D Real Czech Masters are you? ’Twas ever thus.
The DP World Tour top brass may not want to admit it, but their “viable alternative” is simply a feeder circuit. Sorry for the pessimism...
