As Commissioner Elton takes over the European Tour and the press (so far) opts out of tributes to his predecessor George O’Grady, Golfweek's Alistair Tait has some thoughts for new ET lead man Keith Pelley.
Tait wishes he had a webcam to see Pelley run the board's first meeting where rumors say he took them through a singalong of Bennie and the Jets before moving into a solo rendition of Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters for those on conference call from New York, Tait also credits Pelley’s predecessors for holding the entire operation together.
That doesn’t suggest Tait feels status quo should be the order of the day.
Pelley could focus on the immediate threat of a continued talent drain to the PGA Tour. More and more young players – Danny Willett, Andy Sullivan and Tommy Fleetwood, for example – look certain to follow in the footsteps of older peers and eventually base themselves in the U.S.
Despite the $185 million schedule, there are too many long stretches of the Euro Tour calendar with low-purse tournaments. That’s fine for the lower end of the food chain, but the big beasts need stretches of big money events in the United Kingdom and Continental Europe to entice them stay at home for longer periods of time.
Pelley has hopefully taken a look at the accounts, and wondered why the European Tour only makes money in Ryder Cup years and runs a deficit every other year. That’s clearly not good enough.
On the heels of a successful event at Murcar and hosted by Paul Lawrie, Martin Dempster asks the new man to order up more match play.
Rovell writes:
