Golf Talk

Tiger won’t be lured to Dubai.

Just days after announcing that the Dubai World Championship was boosting its total prize pool to a record $10 million dollars and further boosting the bonus for winning the European Tour’s player of the year, now named the Race to Dubai, award to $2 million dollars, Tiger Woods through his agent has announced that Tiger will not make any changes to his schedule. So it would appear that the huge sum of money will not lure Tiger to play in the Dubai, nor will he participate in the required number of tournaments to maintain status as a European Tour player.

The European Tour lowered it’s number of minimum tournaments played to 11 in order to lure some of the top US-based golfers to its tour. More than half of the World’s top ten golfers, six to be exact, already hold European Tour status, but it is the four Americans they desperately want, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk, I believe Zach Johnson is the fourth.

Now, we know that Phil Mickelson won’t budge. He barely plays anywhere outside of the US, let alone all the way in Europe, except for the British Open. Jim Furyk is too much of a Pennsylvanian homer to play the minimum 11 events in Europe. Zach Johnson certainly could go over to Europe to make even more money, but I just don’t see it, I think he will cut back on tournament in 2008 so that he can focus on the majors, which means 2009 will most certainly be the same. That leaves Tiger. Now, if this was 6 years ago, I’d say Tiger would go in a heartbeat, just another notch on his belt to gain. But now that he’s a family man, and has accomplished so much in golf already, I don’t see it. I think Tiger is all about the majors right now, catching Jack Nicklaus’ 18 majors record and trying to win as many more so that his name will live on forever.

So, in essence, I think people are trying to make this out to be that Tiger is rejecting the money. But I don’t see it that way. I think he very much would like to win the money that is being offered by the European Tour, but that his priorities have shifted to solely on the majors.

Tiger Woods, European Tour, Dubai World Championship