SPORTSNET.CA
The chance to compete in the $20 million Dubai World Championship has convinced several top PGA Tour stars including Mike Weir to join the European Tour for 2009, according to Britain’s Daily Express newspaper.
Weir has made no formal announcement regarding his plans for 2009, and his playing schedule on his web site, www.mikeweir.com, only goes as far as Tiger Woods’ Target Challenge in December.
According to the report, American star Anthony Kim and two-time 2008 PGA Tour winner Camilo Villegas have joined Weir and Robert Allenby in taking out European Tour membership.
Both the PGA Tour and European Tour allow players to hold dual memberships.
Kim and Villegas will appear next week in the first event of the 2009 European Tour season, the HSBC Champions in Shanghai.
The newspaper also reports Phil Mickelson and Geoff Ogilvy are seriously considering making a similar commitment before Sunday’s deadline.
Earlier this fall, the European Tour announced a major reorganization of its 2009 calendar called the “Race to Dubai.”
At the end of the 2009 season, the top 60 money earners in Europe will qualify for what the Tour is billing as the richest tournament in the world and held at the Greg Norman-desigend Jumeirah Golf Estates course from November 19-22.
The tournament will have a prize fund of $10 million dollars and a first prize of $1.6 million dollars.
A bonus pool of $10 million dollars will also be shared by the top 15 players in the Race to Dubai after the tournament, with the winner taking away another $2 million.
European Tour membership requires players to compete in a minimum of 12 events. Given that the four major championships and four World Golf Championship events count towards the 12 events, the likes of Weir, Kim and potentially Mikelson would only need to play in an additional four events in order to qualify for the season-ending event in Dubai.
In Singapore this week to compete in the Singapore Open, Mickelson told news service AFP the US golf industry is “stagnant,” and admitted he is giving serious thought to joining the European Tour.
“Although I haven’t yet joined (the European Tour), it is something I am certainly considering,” he said. “I think Dubai has taken one of the giant leaps to making the game of golf more global in the quality of events,” said Mickelson, who will defend his HSBC Champions title in Shanghai next week.
“Certainly, the dollar weakening over the past few years has made foreign currencies much stronger, which makes the purses much larger, so there’s been a lot of international wealth being created,” he said.