Golf, so we are often reminded, is a truly global sport and yes, in terms of the money it generates and then disperses in the form of big prize money, it’s up there with tennis, football, basketball, baseball and a few other big-time sports. Yet here’s the odd thing, geographically, it’s far from a truly global sport. It’s huge in North America and throughout much but not all of Western Europe. In Africa it barely registers on any scale apart really from South Africa. The same can be said for South America and Central America. It’s not to say golf is not played on these two continents, it is, but huge multi-million-dollar tournaments which pop up every week in the USA and on the European-based DP World Tour are non-existent in Africa, South and Central America and the old Eastern European block of countries.
So, without labouring the point, professional golf on the large scale is synonymous with wealthy first world countries.
There is one glaring exception to this rule and that’s Asia, where golf rules supreme in countries rich and poor. Traditionally however, for many decades, golf as in big moneyed professional tournaments only had a foothold in one Asian country and that was Japan. There, golf for a long time has ranked up there in terms of popularity, not far behind the likes of football and sumo wrestling.
The Japanese Tour for years ranked as the world’s Number Two Tour, behind only the USPGA Tour. It offered huge prize money, not as huge but not far behind the money of the USPGA Tour. Many New Zealand pros, male and female, have done really nicely financially from playing the Japanese Tours.
These days, while the big men’s tours, especially the USPGA Tour, are locked in a bitter battle with new comer LIV Golf, which has seen many big names defect from PGA Tours, lured by the huge almost obscene amounts of money players have been offered by LIV Golf to switch camps, none of the fallout from this internecine war has been felt in Asia where the sport continues to grow exponentially.
Symptomatic of this growth was the sight last week of the three biggest PGA men’s Tours all taking place in Asia and the biggest and wealthiest women’s Tour, the LPGA Tour of the United States, was also holding court in Asia. It’s very rare for the men’s PGA Tour to venture beyond the border of the USA but it did last week with the staging of the Zozo Championship in Japan. The leading players from the Japanese Tour lined up against many of the best from the USPGA Tour. Included in this field of approximately 80 placers was Ryan Fox. This was a real feather in Ryan’s cap to get an invite to this event.
Again, like he has been for the past three weeks, Foxy was a model of consistency with 4 rounds close or just under par. Opening with a 2 over 72, then an even par 70, a third round 2 under 68 and a final one over 71. Four good workmanlike rounds for sure but in a tournament where the winning score was 20 under par, a 1 over par for four rounds doesn’t bring many world ranking points or big dollars.
Ryan now ranks at 109 on the FedEx Cup rankings. He’ll have to wait and see if that ranking inside the top 125 holds at year’s end, which if it does will see him keep his playing card for the US Tour next year.
Elsewhere on the US Seniors Tour, Steve Alker had a truly wild rollercoaster ride at the inaugural Simmons Bank Championship in Arkansas.
On Day One of this 3 round tournament Steve, as they say, shot the lights out when he reeled off 8 birdies and then eagled the par 5 18th for a round of 62, 10 under par, which gave him the first round outright lead. Unusually for Steve his consistency deserted him over the next two rounds, shooting a 2 under par 70 on Day Two then a 1 over par 73 on Day Three to finish in a tie for 12th place.
Meanwhile back in Asia, in Korea, where the DP World Tour stopped, it ended in a fitting finish won by the South Korean golfer Byeong An who won the Genesis Championship. Kiwi Daniel Hillier, just inside the top ten when the 4th round started, faded on the last day recording a 2 over par 73 to finish in a tie for 22nd place, but still pocketed a healthy US$45,000 cheque for his week’s work.
The Ladies LPGA Tour was in Malaysia where the Maybank Championship took place. Lydia Ko had another week off and it saw Ruoning Yin win for the second time in three weeks.
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