"Does the PGA Tour suffer? Not necessarily."

Doug Ferguson offers this strong counterpoint to the euphoria over the European Tour's "Race to Dubai" and talk of player defections:

Tiger Woods does not plan to join. What the last four months have shown is that if Woods doesn't play, does anyone care?

And while $20 million sounds like a lot in Europe, the FedExCup pays $35 million in bonus money, with four $7 million tournaments leading up to that. It still pays to play on the PGA Tour, which is why so many Europeans do.

Comments

[Hawkeye]

The PGA Tour players wouldn't have been as interested in joining the Euro Tour if it wasn't for the fact that the regular US season ends so early nowadays. The "Race to Dubai" will make the Euro Tour stronger, but the PGA Tour in its current incarnation isn't likely to suffer too much. This is not a game zero; Mickelson, Villegas, Singh and Garcia aren't going to give up their PGA Tour cards to go play exclusively in Europe. Their memberships' sole purpose is to gain access to those rich year-end tournaments, but it will be a boost to the entire Euro Tour to have them.