When the International Series was unveiled in February last year it was heralded as the most significant development in the history of Asian golf.
As well as pumping in $300m into the Asian Tour, with the tournament purses ranging from $1.5m to $2m per event, the idea of the new Series was to drive greater fan engagement, attract new commercial interest and to help stabilise professional golf after the pandemic.
The 10 events on the calendar now form the backbone of the Asian Tour schedule and it sparked the beginning of a relationship with LIV Golf, which saw the winner of the 2022 Order of Merit, Scott Vincent, claim his place on the LIV Golf League and the Zimbabwean is now part of Iron Heads GC.
Anirban Lahiri joined the Asian Tour in 2008 and he is also now part of the LIV Golf League, the Indian is on Bryson DeChambeau's Crushers GC line-up, and the 36-year-old believes that the current structure is as good as it's ever been.
"It’s phenomenal, I think just as a pathway to LIV, to the qualification event, to winning the International Series points list and getting a spot on LIV. It’s life changing. Every year someone’s going to change their lives pretty much. Even for the others who may not win the money list, they get an opportunity to qualify for next year. Even for those who don’t get to that, you still get fantastic fields for this," explained the seven-time Asian Tour winner.
This week the Asian Tour is breaking new ground with an event at Close House in England, next week they will do the same at Fairmont St Andrews in Scotland.
"This week you get to compete with some of the best players in the world. I think if I’m a rookie or if I’m starting out my career or if I’m trying to get better as a professional golfer and I can get into tournaments which have quality like this, you know it makes a very big difference when you go out and play with some of these guys or watch them play like when I did when I did 15 years ago, when I was just starting out. It made a huge difference, it impacts at so many different levels, I think it’s brilliant we’re playing in this region.
"We’re bringing a lot of the Asian golfers who don’t have much experience playing in the UK and Europe and I think that’s another huge positive. Every way you look at it, it’s phenomenal for Asian golf, It’s phenomenal for global golf because it’s not just Asians playing on this tour. We’ve got a whole bunch of Americans, Aussies, Europeans as well, so it’s brilliant, I think the more we have of it, the better."
Fellow LIV golfer Graeme McDowell echoed Lahiri's sentiments and the 2010 US Open winner would like to see an event head to his home country and possibly the 2019 Open venue Royal Portrush.
The International Series will conclude in November at the Indonesian Masters.
