It's Time for Young American Golfers to Start Embracing a More Global Schedule

10 years ago the golf season really used to begin in late January at Torrey Pines.

Although there were several tournaments held during the weeks prior to the “San Diego Open”—which has had 13 separate names during its 61-year run on tour—Torrey Pines always marked the true beginning of the season for most players and fans.

In recent years, this was largely due to the fact that Tiger Woods would make his season debut at Torrey Pines, but many other big-name stars would also leave their clubs collecting cobwebs in their garages until late January when the tour descended upon San Diego’s sun-swept coast.  

Fast forward 10 years and golf has now become a far more global sport and the landscape of the entire season has been slowly changing.

This week, the PGA Tour will once again return to Torrey Pines for the 62nd time. Only this year the eyes of the golf world will be focused more than 7,000 miles at an event that has been in existence for a mere six years.

Why, you may ask?

Well, because six of the top 10 players in the world, including the top four players in the world, will be on hand in Abu Dhabi for this week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship.

Not to mention that a gentleman by the name of Tiger Woods also chose the desert and a likely $2.7 - $3 million appearance fee, over the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, an event he has won six times and on a course where he also defeated Rocco Mediate in a Monday playoff to claim his third U.S. Open title back in 2008.

Due to high appearance fees as well as the fact that the European Tour’s Middle East Swing now contains far more World Golf Ranking points than the PGA Tour’s opening events, the top golfers in the world now spend two to three weeks in locations that 10 years ago would have seem unfathomable.  

Luke Donald, Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Charl Schwartzel and Jason Day will all be on hand for this week’s Abu Dhabi Championship.

Many of the top players in the world will also attend next week’s Qatar Masters before concluding the Mid-East swing at the Dubai Desert Classic Feb. 9–12.

From there, guys like Donald, Westwood, McIlroy, Kaymer, etc. will make their way overt to Marana, Arizona for the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship and will likely stay stateside to attend a tournament like the Arnold Palmer Invitational as well as the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral before heading up to Augusta for the year’s first major.

This modern day global schedule that most of the top international players follow could explain their recent wave of success at the majors.  

While some of the top young American stars are competing in events such as the Humana Challenge, the Farmers Insurance Open, The Waste Management Phoenix Frat Party and the AT&T Pebble Beach watch a hacker post a score of 135 Pro-Am, top European and international players are embarking on a 5-6 tournament stretch competing almost solely against the top players in the world.

And although once we start getting into the meat of the golf season, the large majority of big-time events (three of the four majors and three of the four WGCs, as well as events such as the Wells Fargo Championship, the Players Championship, The Memorial Tournament and the FedEx Cup) are held within the United States and attended by most of the top American and International players, many of the top young international stars will continue to follow a similar schedule during that stretch of the season.

A guy like McIlroy may attend the Masters, The Wells Fargo Championship and the Players Championship in America.  From there he’d likely head back to Europe for the Volvo World Match Play Championship and the BMW PGA Championship, two of the European Tour’s biggest events which are attended by most of the world’s top players.

McIlroy would then probably take a couple of weeks off to prepare for the U.S. Open, followed by the Irish Open and Scottish Opens in preparation for the Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

This is the kind of schedule that most of the young European and International stars are embracing these days, which allows them to gain far more experience competing week-in and week-out against the best golfers on the face of the planet than their American counterparts.

Why are so many good young international players winning majors lately?

It could be due to the game’s global growth, it could be just a cyclical thing (in the early 1990s international players were also dominating the majors), but it could also have a lot to do with the fact that these talented young international players are not afraid to travel long distances to compete against the game’s best.

So, when a guy like Rory McIlroy arrives at the 2012 U.S. Open, he may just be a lot more comfortable competing against the likes of Westwood, Kaymer, Donald, Woods, Scott, Shwartzel, Garcia, Scott, etc. etc. than many of the young American players who have spent the first half of their year competing solely on the PGA Tour at events where most of the top-10 players in the world are not present.  

The world of professional golf is changing and unless these talented young American players start embracing a more global schedule, I fear that they will continue to struggle on golf’s biggest stages, most notably at the major championships.

For more golf news, insight and analysis, check out The Tour Report.