Race To Dubai Purse Drops 25%; Anthony Kim Will Learn The News In Late 2011

Lawrence Donegan reports that the once vaunted $100 million Race To Dubai which lured Camilo Villegas and Anthony Kim to join the European Tour has taken a major hit.

The European Tour's flagship tournament is expected to lose its claim to being the richest in professional golf this week when officials will announce that the prize fund for the much-vaunted Race to Dubai is to be cut because of the economic troubles that have beset its sponsor.

Details of a new deal struck between the tour and Leisurecorp, a Dubai-based developer, will be announced this week but it is understood that the world's leading players will be playing for at least 25% less than had been promised.

In a separate blog post, Donegan analyzes what this means and concludes that the European Tour and PGA Tour are locked in a battle over several regions. He concludes that the PGA Tour's interest in the Olympic movement is driven in part by the desire to expand beyond the U.S. borders.

And don't forget golf's Olympic bid, which is being run by the PGA Tour's very own Ty Votow. It wasn't so long ago the PGA Tour was agnostic (at best) about the idea of golf in the Olympics. Now it couldn't be more enthusiastic. Why would that be? Because the PGA Tour wants to grow the game, would be the "corporate" response. The cynic's response would be that it wants to grow the game in a way that most benefits the corporate interests of the PGA Tour.

Assuming golf is accepted into the 2016 Olympics (and it seems that it will) then most of the credit will go to Votaw, and by extension the PGA Tour. Given the goodwill that will follow a successful bid, one would have to assume that Votaw and friends would then be perfectly placed to advance the interests of the PGA Tour in places where hitherto it has had no presence whatsoever.

In last week's Golfweek, Alistair Tait looked at the Olympic push as the August 13 decision date looms. Sadly missing from the piece was the lovely Annika family photo featuring the gang that took Lausanne by storm.

Anyway, Tait writes of Votaw and the growing the game point that Donegan is questioning.

He simply points to the impact the Olympics has had on other sports in the world’s most populous nation.

“There are 300 million people now playing basketball in China,” Votaw said. “There wasn’t anywhere near that number before the (U.S.) Dream Team played in Barcelona (in 1992). I’ll take 10 percent of that. The estimated number of golfers in the world is around 60 million, so if we get another 30 million then we’ve grown the game by 50 percent. Even if it’s 1 percent, 3 million, then we’ve still grown the game.”