Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)

After years of needing to constantly run through all number of different scenarios and projections to explain to the audience watching at home who needed what to happen in order to win the FedEx Cup, the PGA Tour decided that, instead of just going all in and hiring Benedict Cumberbatch to dress up as Dr. Strange and present a segment called ‘Stranger Things Have Happened” during the actual broadcast of the Tour Championship, they were going to completely revamp their season curtain-closer at East Lake to make it easier to follow.

And, despite some criticism, I think they succeeded in doing just that. Their ‘staggered scoring’ to denote where everyone was in the rankings and reward the leader for being atop said rankings heading to Atlanta let everyone know that whoever ended up with the lowest total score come Sunday evening was not only going to win the Tour Championship, but the FedEx Cup right along with it. No need for multiple different scenarios to be explained; no need for someone to break out a whiteboard and make us feel like we were watching the numbers round during an episode of “Countdown”; and no need for photographers to be snapping two different golfers with two different trophies at the end of it.

Just one tournament. One goal. One winner. Grand job.

Bearing that very much in mind, however, given the DP World Tour Championship starts today, the question of whether or not the European Tour needs to, not only consider adopting a format like that of the American’s Tour Championship to decide who actually wins the year-long ‘Race to Dubai’, but perhaps make even more wholesale changes to how their season plays out, I feel has come to the fore.

Because after replacing the ‘Order of Merit’ back in 2009, this year marks the tenth anniversary of the ‘Race to Dubai’. And whilst the Race has, indeed, become the established contest Tour Chiefs would have earmarked for it way back when everyone still liked hearing “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas, I think for the sake of revitalizing and future-proofing the Race, I think it’s no harm to start thinking about making some changes.

Now, to be fair to those in charge on the European Tour, they haven’t been averse to making changes to the ‘Race to Dubai’ over the years in an effort to make it more entertaining.

In 2013 they introduced ‘The Final Series’, a run of four highly lucrative tournaments to finish out the season that saw the Turkish Airlines Open, WGC-HSBC Champions and BMW Masters providing the run-in to the DP World Tour Championship, until a change in 2016 saw that number drop to three and the Nedbank Golf Challenge step in to replace the WGC-HSBC and BMW Masters.

In 2017 they introduced the ‘Rolex Series’, which, as we all know, are a series of high-profile tournaments with larger-than-normal purse sizes and increased ‘Race to Dubai’ points.

And even as recently as this year changes have been made to that very same ‘Final Series’ by increasing the amount of money and ‘Race to Dubai’ points on offer; progressively reducing the field sizes from previous years from event to event; and making it so that the ‘Race to Dubai Bonus Pool’ of $5m will now be divided between the top 5 players in the rankings at the end of the Tour Championship as opposed to the top 10 like it had been previously – all changes made with the intention of ensuring the last three events (but in particular the DP World Tour Championship) are as entertaining as possible.

Because, ultimately, like all professional sport organisations, that’s the business the European Tour are in – the entertainment business.

And whilst those efforts should, of course, be commended, I wanted to try and imagine what I’d do if the European Tour CEO, Keith Pelley, sent me the following email: “Stephen, being that you’re one of my closest, most personal friends*, I’m giving you ‘carte blanche’ to decide what the 2021 European Tour season looks like. I’m getting all sorts of grief for it, but I don’t care. Whatever changes you want to make – consider them done. Sincerely, Your Best Friend*, KP.”

So, because I can’t physically stand the idea of letting down my close, personal friend*, Keith Pelley … here’s what I came up with. 

(*) Disclaimer: Keith Pelley and I are not actually close, personal friends nor does he consider himself to be my “Best Friend” … and that breaks my heart just a little, tiny bit every day.

Make Us Miss It

The idea of there being an ‘off-season’ in golf is one of those things that you can say is technically true, but in reality is a load of nonsense. For instance, the “off-season” between the end of last year’s PGA Tour season and this year’s season was just eighteen days. Yet when you consider that the “off-season” between the end of this year’s ‘Race to Dubai’ and the beginning of the 2020 one is going to be all of FOUR days once the dust settles on Sunday, eighteen days seems almost ‘decadent’ in comparison.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like watching golf. But sometimes you almost get the impression that the European and PGA Tours are terrified that if they establish an actual substantial “off-season”, that we, the viewers, will all of a sudden forget that golf exists. I mean, just think of the anticipation that builds ahead of the Premier League starting back up in August after its break during the summer or the NFL returning in September – why does that exist? Because people have had a chance to miss it and that’s an incredibly powerful emotional response; but to have that ‘yearning’, almost, is something we golf fans don’t really get to experience outside of possibly waiting for the Ryder Cup to roll back around or the Majors.

So, first change I’d make to the 2021 European Tour Season is that when the 2020 ‘Race to Dubai’ would come to a close next November, that would be it for the rest of the year. All the television equipment would be packed away; all the tour trucks put onto blocks; and all the Sky commentators released back into the wild, because the first tournament of the 2021 season wouldn’t be happening until the first or second week in January. And once the Race would start up? It would now finish a whole month earlier than what it does now, with the first three weeks in October being entirely dedicated to the ‘Final Series’, culminating, obviously, with the DP World Tour Championship. This would mean there’d be a full two months of an off-season, with the opportunity for one or two special events during that time period like the recent ‘Skins Event’ in Japan or something akin to that of ‘The Match: Tiger vs Phil”.

If They Can Do It? So Can We

Now, given my changes to the scheduling of the 2021 ‘Race to Dubai’ thus far would mean there’d suddenly be eight current tournaments without a slot to play in, I would suggest we merely take a leaf out of the PGA Tour’s book to resolve that situation. And what that ‘leaf’ is, is that in the week of the Open Championship and each of the WGC events, you will always see an alternate PGA tournament being played for those who don’t qualify for any of those events, whether that be the recently held ‘Bermuda Championship’ that ran opposite the WGC-HSBC Champions or the ‘Barbasol Championship’ that will be happening the same week as the Open next July. 

So, for each of the WGC events that would happen in the 2021 season, but also for each of the three American Majors in that season, I would have an alternate European Tour event running the exact same weeks. Now would that mean you’d have to lose a tournament? Possibly, but that would be a decision I’d be willing to make.

Because, if you think about it, to not already be running tournaments in each of these weeks (currently for next season the ‘Open De France’ is the only tournament scheduled to run opposite a WGC) doesn’t make all that much sense. I mean, given the time difference between where the WGC’s and the American Majors are held and here, it usually means their coverage doesn’t start until the evenings, so you wouldn’t be directly competing with them for viewers, as any alternate event over here would be finished by mid-afternoon at the latest.

Plus, if you give those players who don’t qualify for any of those events seven or eight extra chances to win points during the season, it means they can get further up the rankings in the ‘Race to Dubai’ and, as a result, become more known to viewers, which is always a good thing.

Dangle Some New Carrots

Being on this side of the Atlantic means that, compared to those in the States, we don’t see our top, top stars as often as we’d like. Now you might be thinking that it’s the larger purses on offer Stateside that keep said stars from trekking back over here to play, and, truthfully, I previously would have been of the same thinking. But if you look at the recently played Turkish Airlines Open and Nedbank Golf Challenge, there was $2m and $2.5m on offer respectively to the individual winners, yet, regardless of that, so many of those top stars were still marked ‘in absentia’. So what does this tell us? Well, that it’s not about money for these players – it’s about hassle.

See, if you look at the schedules of a lot of the top stars who ply their trade on both tours, when it comes to the European version, they tend to get the majority of the tournaments they’re obligated to play in a season (I think it’s four outside of WGC’s & Majors) done and dusted early in the year.

So, to try and capitalise on this tendency to get out on the course between January and the beginning of March, in the 2021 season, in much the same way as the Bonus Pool works now, I would have a high-profile tournament in May serve as a halfway marker in the season, where, if you happen to be in the Top 5 in the ‘Race to Dubai’ rankings at the end of that tournament, depending on your position amongst those five players, you get a share of $5m and a nice amount of ‘Race to Dubai’ points – with the overall “theme” of that tournament being it’s an opportunity to “put some money in the bank” going into the latter half of the season.

As well as that, in much the same way as the ‘Wyndham Rewards Top 10’ works over on the PGA Tour, I would also reward those players who manage to finish in the Top 10 of the ‘Race to Dubai’ rankings at the end of the ‘regular season’ – i.e. just before the ‘Final Series’ begins in October – with a share of $10m, with first place getting the largest share and the money getting gradually lower as you work your way down to tenth place.

What would be good about implementing something like this, both with the ‘mid-season’ reward and end-of-season reward, is that if the tour is having trouble attracting big sponsors for an entire Rolex Series event, they might have more success tempting them with the prospect of just putting their name to one, or both, of those prize funds that would be mentioned all the way through the season.

Make ‘The Final Series’ Matter

My final change to the 2021 season would be to how ‘The Final Series’ would work. Whilst I would still have the field being gradually reduced week by week in October, I would decrease the numbers participating even further than what they are currently. So instead of starting out at the Turkish Airlines Open with the top 70 in the rankings like it was this year, which then went down to the top 60 for the Nedbank and now the top 50 who will play this week in Dubai; I would go top 60, top 50 and then, like the Tour Championship on the PGA Tour, whittle it down to the top 30 getting a crack out in Dubai.

Also, to make participation in the final two weeks before the Tour Championship in Dubai really matter, I would up the ‘Race to Dubai’ points on offer to 12,000 across the board for the ‘Final Series’ events in order to get some nice chopping and changing happening in the rankings, because for the DP World Tour Championship I would adopt the same ‘staggered scoring’ system as that of the American’s Tour Championship, so that your position in the rankings at the end of the Nedbank Golf Challenge affects where you start on the leaderboard at the Tour Championship.

Now I gave this one a lot of thought and was seriously considering not including it, especially when you look at this week’s tournament and see how you’ve five top guys in Wiesberger, Fleetwood, Rahm, Lowry and Fitzpatrick all gunning it out for top spot in the ‘Race to Dubai’. But when I see players like Rory McIlroy not in the running to win the overall Race when he’s only sixth in the rankings? For me? I just don’t think that’s what’s best for business. Instead, I think you should make it a straight shootout for all the chips. Winner takes all – or, like I said near the very beginning of this article, “One tournament. One goal. One winner.”

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So there you have my suggestions for what changes I’d make to the European Tour season/’Race to Dubai’ if I suddenly had ‘carte blanche’ to do what I please. 

Are the changes all that radical? I don’t think they particularly are, no. 

Will we ever see any of them implemented? I’d like to think we will, yes, in particular the ‘staggered scoring’ – but given I also like to think that someday I could maybe be a scratch golfer, I may not be the most ‘sound-minded’ of people to pay any attention to.

And, finally, the question that started it all, “Has The Race Been Run?”

No, it hasn’t … but it might be starting to look a little tired.