European Tour 2016 - Dubai

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Selected RD 1 Tee Times
1 07:40 Felipe AGUILAR Raphaël JACQUELIN
1 07:50 Renato PARATORE Mikko ILONEN
1 08:00 Romain WATTEL Jaco VAN ZYL
1 08:10 Matthew SOUTHGATE Kiradech APHIBARNRAT
1 08:20 Ricardo GOUVEIA Padraig HARRINGTON
1 08:30 George COETZEE Pablo LARRAZÁBAL
1 08:40 Marcus FRASER Brandon STONE
1 08:50 Victor DUBUISSON David LIPSKY
1 09:00 Jorge CAMPILLO Julien QUESNE
1 09:10 Tommy FLEETWOOD Nacho ELVIRA
1 09:25 Joakim LAGERGREN Soomin LEE
1 09:35 Nicolas COLSAERTS Alejandro CAÑIZARES
1 09:45 Richard STERNE Byeong Hun AN
1 09:55 Charl SCHWARTZEL Grégory BOURDY
1 10:05 Rikard KARLBERG Alexander LEVY
1 10:15 Shane LOWRY David HORSEY
1 10:25 Bradley DREDGE Matthew FITZPATRICK
1 10:35 Richard BLAND Scott HEND
1 10:45 Francesco MOLINARI Andrew JOHNSTON
1 10:55 Thomas PIETERS Søren KJELDSEN
1 11:10 Sergio GARCIA Haotong LI
1 11:20 Thongchai JAIDEE Ross FISHER
1 11:30 Joost LUITEN Jeunghun WANG
1 11:40 Martin KAYMER Andy SULLIVAN
1 11:50 Lee WESTWOOD Bernd WIESBERGER
1 12:00 Thorbjørn OLESEN Chris WOOD
1 12:10 Louis OOSTHUIZEN Rafa CABRERA BELLO
1 12:20 Branden GRACE Tyrrell HATTON
1 12:30 Rory MCILROY Alex NOREN
1 12:40 Danny WILLETT Henrik STENSON

Sadly most golfers only have a very short "purple" period. Remember when David Howell was on fire for about 12 months? I think he got to number 6 or something, then went back to mediocrity.

Could that happen to Rev Gordon Spieth? He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, and is going to catapult down the rankings by April if he doesn't do something soon.

Any chance you could drop the lame "rev" label when referring to Simba?



But no, Spieth will clearly be part of the top 10 for most of the next 5-10 years.

McLaren wrote:Any chance you could drop the lame "rev" label when referring to Simba?



But no, Spieth will clearly be part of the top 10 for most of the next 5-10 years.

No. It's no more lame than your "Simba" and 100x as relevant, so no, I won't.

super_realist wrote:

Could that happen to Rev Gordon Spieth? He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, and is going to catapult down the rankings by April if he doesn't do something soon.

After his Dean & Deluca win he has amassed 8.5 points in average in his 8 tourneys, exactly his OWGR average. So it's not exactly like his dropping off the face of the earth, quite the opposite, he seems solidly planted.

Or to look at it this way, he's lost over 445 points in 2016 and gained only 275.

If he's not got his finger out of his arse between now and when his 2015 Masters points drop off, he's going to be well out of the top 10.

pedro wrote:Some are just late bloomers. Jimmy Walker another example.
Let's hope Noren won't be a one-year-wonder, like his compatriot Edfors - who won thrice in a year, two of those ironically also the Scottish Open and British Masters -  for then to sink into oblivity.

Oh I agree completely with the "late bloomer" thing. Of late it's just seemed to be more of the "young guns" getting the notoriety, but I still believe prime for most players is more likely to be in that 28-35 age range.

Entirely mis-placed, stupid and juvenile "Rev" derision's aside.... Spieth hasn't exactly fallen off the map, but he's certainly not tearing it up either.   If he's averaged 8.5 points per event since Colonial... and considering the way OWGR points depreciate over the years... that would put Spieth trending to about 4.76 average (abt 56% of his raw points per event).  If he were to maintain that pace for 2 years... that would put him in the high-teens OWGR ranking.  

IMHO... bottom line with that guy is he made some changes to chase some extra distance and in the process got his driver swing totally outta whack.  When a guy's trying to recover from too many "off the planet" drives, it ends up putting pressure on most if not every key tee to green performance stat down the line.... GIR's, proximity, scrambling %'s....  

Surprisingly.... looking at his stats, when Spieth would win he was ALWAYS way up there in his tee to green stats, but not always on his putting stats. He won a few times with mediocre putting, but never mediocre ball striking or mediocre total tee to green. And tee to green starts off the tee. IMO Spieth's short game and putting is so good he can be "reasonably" shorter than the big-knocks, but he can't afford to miss FW's as badly as he has been.  I'm sure he knows it, but question is can he fix it.  If he can't (but it doesn't get any worse), then IMO he's still a very nice top 5-15 kinda player... but won't be challenging for #1 or in as many majors going forward as he has in the past. If he can fix it, then he'll be right back in the conversation.

I think because of the prevalence of 9C, when he was at number one for something like 600+ weeks, then we possibly expect anyone who gets to number one to stay in or around that number for hundreds of weeks, or perhaps ever see their weeks out there. We make an unfair comparison I think.

Much as I loathe 9C, at the time he was a rare beast, and at present, due to the level being raised, I think it's a lot more difficult to maintain a Top 10 ranking for that length of time.

So whether Fr Spieth, Day, McIlroy, Stenson etc get to number one, I don't think we should necessarily expect them to be maintaining that position, or any position that high for the same length of time and we'll perhaps see a few more of the Westwood's/Donald's that make it there, but can't quite keep there for a sustained period.

I think we'll see a lot more of a topsy turvey top 10, bit like the Women's Tennis top 10. Lots of reasons for fluctuations and new additions/losses to that list.

Didn't Luke Donald hold the number one spot for over a year?

Yeah, he did, but I don't think that simply holding number one, should mean we expect them to maintain a similar standard for a very long time, that is to say, I think we are going to see more players occupy number 1 like Donald, and then after a short time, waft in and around the top 50 mark.

Davie wrote:Didn't Luke Donald hold the number one spot for over a year?

Luke was #1 for more than a year's worth of weeks (55), but they weren't consecutive.

Luke was #1 for 39 weeks the first time,
then #2 for 2 weeks
then #1 for 4 weeks
then #2 for 2 weeks
then #1 for 1 week
then #2 for 3 weeks
then finally #1 for 11 more

Rory was able to hold #1 for 54 consecutive weeks from Aug 3, 2014 - Aug 9, 2015

Jason Day has been #1 for 36 weeks consecutive from March 27, 2016... and according to PD... is safe to "barely" hold it through the end of the year even if Rory wins. As per PD, Dubai dropped from 54 to 52 points.... if it had of remained 54, Rory could have taken #1 by years end with a win.

super_realist wrote:Yeah, he did, but I don't think that simply holding number one, should mean we expect them to maintain a similar standard for a very long time, that is to say, I think we are going to see more players occupy number 1 like Donald, and then after a short time, waft in and around the top 50 mark.

I mostly agree Super... but it appears to me it'll more likely be a "musical chairs" situation between a few top players at #1. The thing when Westwood, Kaymer, Scott and to some extent Luke were #1, was it was almost #1 as in "well it has to be somebody". They basically fell back to the pack and just happened to be the one on top. But Rory, Day and Spieth took their #1's by significantly separating themselves from the pack. IMO for the next few years we're likely to see 1-2-3 players at a time maintain some sort of separation.

Maybe we just expected more from Spieth after winning two Majors and contending in the other 2. Honestly we/I never really expected anything when LW or Donald rose to #1.

I looked at Spieth from a different viewpoint. Almost as if he'd shot his bolt too early by accumulating too many points too quickly. I'm not surprised to see his current period of relative anonymity.

Noren is no flash in the plan - he's been a good player for a long time, fighting fitness issues most of the way, even when he was playing regularly. We predicted his rankings rise earlier this year, before he ever won - back when he only had about 20-odd counting events. He still only has 38.
Hopefully he'll train on and continue this form for a decade or more.
Imagine he might have been a treammate of Hunner Mahan at OK State, possibly Morgan Hoffmann too; certainly a rival to Anthony Kim at Oklahoma.

Do you think Noren could reach #1? I haven't really seen all that much of him, but his consistency this year can't be ignored.

I think we need to see Noren contend on the big stage and in the US. He didn't exactly impress during the Majors or WGC's.

pedro wrote:I think we need to see Noren contend on the big stage and in the US. He didn't exactly impress during the Majors or WGC's.

Exactly... that's the next step he's got to make.  Lee Westwood couldn't win those big events, but at least he could contend in them and earn big OWGR points.  To date Noren just hasn't.  He had a chance to make a statement in the recent WGC-HSBC.... and he "kinda" indicated he would compete better in those big events with a T12.  That's nothing to write home about certainly... but at least far better than his 50-something finishes in his other two WGC's this year.

Can't see him rising much further unless he takes his game, as pedro says, to a higher level, WGC's, Majors, the occasional US invite.

Despite his 4 wins, he's "only" scored 211 owgr pts this year, and his tournament-played divisor will start rising about 40 at the same time his points earned start to decrement so he needs to maintain this pace - winning Dubai would probably only push him up one spot.


Was Westwood's World Cup place dependent on playing with Danny Willett? And withdrawn when Danny w/d? Sullivan and Wood playing now.

I don't know how replacements work but I do know that the highest ranked golfer from each golfer gets to handpick his partner (as long as he meets eligibility requirements)

Chris Wood was the 3rd highest ranked Englishman (Rose is on medical leave) at the time of the exemption, so presumably he gets to pick his partner. snubbing Westwood for Sullivan.

According to Wiki, the WC goes off the rankings in August 1. Wood was 26th and Casey was 28th in early August.

The PGATour website is (once again) worthless in describing how the teams qualifies. It does list Wood & Sullivan in their listing, but it still has Willett & Westy in the team pictures.

Frannie picked Matteo for his partner when he could have picked DoDo. (because Italy did not have 5 players in the top 500). Dodo is now ranked #1129. What has happened to his game? I wonder if his coach is still Sean Foley.

GPB wrote:I don't know how replacements work but I do know that the highest ranked golfer from each golfer gets to handpick his partner (as long as he meets eligibility requirements)

Chris Wood was the 3rd highest ranked Englishman (Rose is on medical leave) at the time of the exemption, so presumably he gets to pick his partner.  snubbing Westwood for Sullivan.

Apparently that's correct... The ESPN article linked below seems to indicate it was Wood's decision to make "...Rose's call to turn down the invite allowed Wood to commit to the event and he selected Sullivan, who made his Ryder Cup debut for Europe this year, as his playing partner, meaning Lee Westwood, who was due to play with Willett, will no longer feature...."

http://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/18045306/andy-sullivan-chris-wood-represent-england-world-cup-golf-danny-willett-justin-rose-withdrawal

And speaking of websites like earlier today.  I went in to look at Italy's OWGR ranked players as per GPB's comment above.  HOW REFRESHING to actually go to the OWGR website with a TON of data, that navigates sensibly and presents the requested information FAST, CLEAN, CLEAR, PARSEABLE and CONCISE. Plus it's easily copyable and pasteable into whatever other kind of document one would like.  

GASP.... what a concept huh?  Doesn't the OWGR know that they're supposed to make their site unusable while I wait for the dozens upon dozens of unwanted videos, ads, SEO routines & data mining apps and other crap to load?

robopz wrote:And speaking of websites like earlier today.  I went in to look at Italy's OWGR ranked players as per GPB's comment above.  HOW REFRESHING to actually go to the OWGR website with a TON of data, that navigates sensibly and presents the requested information FAST, CLEAN, CLEAR, PARSEABLE and CONCISE. Plus it's easily copyable and pasteable into whatever other kind of document one would like.  

GASP.... what a concept huh?  Doesn't the OWGR know that they're supposed to make their site unusable while I wait for the dozens upon dozens of unwanted videos, ads, SEO routines & data mining apps and other crap to load?

Robo: I posted RANTED in this Power Rankings thread to Rob Bolton about some of the concerns we discussed in the other thread.

He just responded a few minutes ago. Go take a look at it. He says to use the red vertical FEEDBACK button that is attached to the vertical scroll bar.

It looks like Frannie could not pick Dodo. He had to pick one of the other Top 5 Italians.

It seems priority for new websites is to have incredibly large fonts, require a lot of scrolling and make it impossible for the user to find relevant info. That goes for both consumer oriented and B2B websites. That sort of stuff may cater to hipsters that prioritize form over content but I have a hard time grasping it would do anything good for the business. Personally I stopped using the pgatour.com website for anything other than checking out leaderboards, and even here I stopped using some of the advanced features like shot-tracking etc.
I still think the ET website is ok (the desktop version - the mobile version stinks) but I suppose it's just a matter of time before it'll start look like a braille tutorial.

Really liking what I've heard so far with the ET doing away with the Finals Series in favor or the "Rolex" Series. With the purse increases being announced, that'll put 7 tournaments at the $7+ million mark on the ET.... with maybe 2-3 others on the way in the next few years.

IMO Rory is absolutely correct in his assessment it's getting harder and harder to dual tour these days.... IMO It's really only for the best of the best.... but if the ET can get enough purses up to alleviate the money incentive for a player leaving, it's gotta help. That alone won't stop the flow entirely IMO.... but if the ET could get up to maybe a dozen $7 mil events, I do think the midrange OWGR 30-75 type of Euro's will think twice about dual touring.

http://www.golfweek.com/2016/11/15/rory-mcilroy-calls-new-rolex-series-real-boost-european-tour/

What I've always liked about the ET, in spite of its diminishing importance as a tour is that many of the venues they go to are a bit more interesting and varied than those in the US.
It would be good to see some tournaments with more money to attract better fields to these venues.

Hadn't seen that. Wonderful! Well done Rolex!!

super_realist wrote:What I've always liked about the ET, in spite of its diminishing importance as a tour is that many of the venues they go to are a bit more interesting and varied than those in the US.
It would be good to see some tournaments with more money to attract better fields to these venues.

Couldn't agree more with every bit of that. When it comes to courses.... What I've really hated to see on the PGA Tour is it's recent move to adopting more "linksy-like" but inland courses that are all looking more and more the same. Same formula, artificial undulations down the fairways, supposed "native grasses" (which often aren't native at all), undulating greens. For instance you could take TPC Boston, Golf Club of Houston, and Dallas' new Trinity Forest, and there's nothing indigenous about their regions reflected on any of them... You could swap any of the three with any of the other three and I doubt anybody would notice, except Trinity has less trees.

And again... at least for the near to mid term (3-6 years), I doubt this makes much difference for the very TOP Euro players.... they're already used to going to the US and many have made their primary residences there... but this could start to stem the tide of future TOP Euro players and a lot more of those "mid range" guys I mentioned.

Doesn’t it just keep the ET shut down even more down until the BMW PGA, making it even easier for both regulars and double dippers to select their ET events? As there’s an abundance of PGA tour events the double dippers will just play a few more pre-Players PGAT events to keep their minimum for the year? I only see the Irish and Italian Opens benefitting from this, the Italian due to the new calendar slot and increased purse, and the Irish due to the new July slot. Of course there's a spill over effect to the adjacent tourneys but since that's probably the Scottish and the Final series it'll hardly be noteworthy.

robo

I must be well of the pace in keeping up with ET news because that link is the first I have heard of the "Rolex series". Thanks for posting.

I agree with you that this appears to be a great boost for the ET and mirrors the PGAT model where there are an elite level of tour event like memorial, Honda, wells fargo etc which boost the perception of the tour. At the moment there are not enough weeks in the ET schedule where you feel like you are watching a really elite pro golf event.

Not sure if you noticed but I have been banging on for at least 2/3 years about the increasing impossibility of double dipping for players not comfortably in the top 20 OWGR. There is no way the ET guys haven't noticed that is pretty much no longer possible and I am sure those at a Donaldson like level would be happy if they could stay exclusively on the ET without forgoing the opportunity to earn massive cheques.

Certainly could see the likes of Donald, Donaldson, Westwood, Poulter playing much more regularly in Europe, that's if they aren't already forced to due to their current form.

Might see the odd septic more likely to travel to some of the more far flung destinations.
I see the Scottish Open benefitting massively from this, maybe just in time for Trump Aberdeen?

How many of those have American WAG's, kids in US schools etc.? That'll restrain them. But I agree it can prevent/limit the outflux from the ET.

I'm not suggesting any of the Americans will MOVE over here, where would they go to church for goodness sake?

I'm simply saying they might play over here a bit more often.

Mac.... I've been seeing the same issues on dual touring... but going back more like 7-8 years now, maybe even further. To me the issue has become there's just so much depth on the PGA Tour these days, to ask some 30-50 international guy to come over here and compete for status while playing only 2/3 to 3/4 of the total schedule is getting to be too much. IMO the way to do it these days is to either forget dual touring entirely, but take advantage of the co-sanctions you can get in, and pick up the Players if you can get in and maybe 2-3 Sponsor exemptions if you like, but DON'T take membership. OR... commit to the PGAT as full time as you possibly can, playing only the minimum on the ET. So take a guy like BEEF for example... That dude has REALLY put himself behind the 8-ball not playing any fall events here. I'm not sure he's good enough to have done that. He might pull it off for a year or two, but the question is can he really maximize his potential on EITHER tour by dual touring?

Super.... I doubt this makes any difference at all for the guys who have established primary residency in the U.S. like Donald and Poulter. In effect they're basically "Americanized" and are gonna play ET only to the extent they have to. IMO the ONLY reason they would play more on the ET is if they lose PGAT status.... which both are no locks to keep any more. If anything... if they add the French Open to this like they're expecting... all this will do for those guys is make it easier for them NOT to come back in May for the BMW PGA because they can now more easily get 2-3 of their 5 events in between the Open's. Then if they add in 1-2 in the Middle East... and/or 1-2 after the Tour Championship on the PGAT.... they've basically made their "nut".

My point was Robo that the likes of Poulter might well lose their cards in the US soon.
For some of them, in fact most of them, I think Europe suits their game better anyway and as most are over the hill, might make it easier on them too in a Jeff Overton kind of way.

Pedro... I agree... IMO the effect of this is all about the future generation of Euro Players... not as much the current crop.

Digesting this a little more... IMO the BMW PGA looks to be getting really hung out to dry with this. Yes they've raised their purse too, but we already knew the Irish Open was moving before the Scottish Open... so now the BMW is hanging out all by itself with no other really strong events on either side of it. IMO that makes the BMW PGA a LOT less attractive "fly back home to play" option for the Dual Tour guys based in the states. The net effect will probably be to actually help the Byron Nelson and Colonial fields on the PGAT get some more of those dual Tour Euro's.

But the PGAT could be negatively affected in it's events between the Open's in two ways. Not that the Travelers, Quicken Loans and Greenbrier were getting many dual Tour guys anyway, but I can't imagine them getting any now, unless maybe they have a sponsor tie-in of some sort. AND... This new much stronger ET schedule between the Open's might work out in attracting a few more Patrick Reed's to consider dual Touring the other way or at least attract a few more top American's to take in an ET event or two before the OPEN.

super_realist wrote:My point was Robo that the likes of Poulter might well lose their cards in the US soon.
For some of them, in fact most of them, I think Europe suits their game better anyway and as most are over the hill, might make it easier on them too in a Jeff Overton kind of way.

I get that Super... ET is already the "backstop" to the Dual Tour guys losing their cards... and still will be.

Also interesting... Rod Pampling talking in Australia said something to the effect that he thinks Australians should consider going to the ET instead of the PGAT these days. Just too hard to make it on the PGAT, with every event being so deep field wise.... a lot easier on the ET to find smaller and weaker field events in which to flourish and gain status.... maybe even win.

robopz wrote:IMO the way to do it these days is to either forget dual touring entirely, but take advantage of the co-sanctions you can get in, and pick up the Players if you can get in and maybe 2-3 Sponsor exemptions if you like, but DON'T take membership.

So, if you are good enough ET only member, (i.e. top 30 OWGR say for example) you can play the Majors and WGC's and Players. How many other tournaments are you allowed to do before you have to take membership? How many can you "guest" in, by sponsor invitations etc?

Whatever happens , it's looking in better health than under Grady.
What I'd like to see less of though is the pointless trips to Morocco countries like that.

I'm never wrong wrote:

robopz wrote:IMO the way to do it these days is to either forget dual touring entirely, but take advantage of the co-sanctions you can get in, and pick up the Players if you can get in and maybe 2-3 Sponsor exemptions if you like, but DON'T take membership.

So, if you are good enough ET only member, (i.e. top 30 OWGR say for example) you can play the Majors and WGC's and Players. How many other tournaments are you allowed to do before you have to take membership? How many can you "guest" in, by sponsor invitations etc?

Non member max is 12 events.. so in addition to the 8 co-sanctions, a guy could play the Players + 3 more with ZERO issues.... ala a Martin Kaymer.  And there's ways to "fudge" that up an event or two as well. The SE limit is 7... but if a guy is exempt into the 8 co-sanctions... it's not a factor.

Thanks Robo

One other potential impact from this.... I mentioned to Super how the ET would still be the "backstop" for the failed dual Tour guys going back to the ET. Well... maybe not so fast.

If the money is going to go up significantly in enough FULL field ET "regular" events, that means the full time ET guys who are staying home and playing all of them are in effect raising the bar for what the "Dualie" has to accomplish in the co-sanctions and the few ET events he plays. Now I assume a "Poulter" wouldn't have any issues getting starts via invites on the ET if he had status or not.... but for some of the lesser names... I'm not so sure that would be the case.

I think all this looks great!

One thing not mentioned so far is possible reconfiguration of PGA Tour calendar, especially with the mooted suggestion that the PGA Championship moves to May. Not clear yet whether this is just for (Olympic year) 2020 or something more permanent.
This would cause the Tour to reconsider continuing to stage The Players in May still, and might further undermine the BMW PGA which, given ructions with the owners of Wentworth, they may be doing anyway.


As for Pampling, he should be doing something to advocate the strengthening of the domestic Aussie schedule to better prepare his mates for PGA Tour or ET. Until that happens, I don't see any other than the very best Aussies succeeding anywhere.

A caddie has (potentially) earnt the same as the 93rd placed golfer on the R2D. But then see Eddie Pepperells' response.
CLICK HERE

(Courtesy of GCW)

I'm never wrong wrote:A caddie has (potentially) earnt the same as the 93rd placed golfer on the R2D. But then see Eddie Pepperells' response.
CLICK HERE

(Courtesy of GCW)

Eddie!

Looks like Pelley has thrown the Baby out with the Bathwater.

French Open was anointed Golden Boy status in 2016. Bonus Phantom Euro and OWGR points.

Now, there are least 7 tournaments that are getting the Golden Boy treatment.

The thing which confused me about this is- What the hell is the South Region OOM, is being 93rd on that impressive and why would you need to hit a rescue from 175 yards?

super_realist wrote: What the hell is the South Region OOM,

Super, I think Eddie was being very self deprecating, reflecting his losing his card etc. There is a South Region Click here for schedule

Hopefully Eddie Pepp will get his card back. T10 after four (out of six) rounds played, tied with YE Yang.
Plenty of players with modest past ET success have missed the cut; Tullo, DelMoral, Craig Lee, Edfors, Rumford, Richard Finch, Velasco among them. Matt Goggin didn't even reach the Finals, a long way removed from T5 at the Turnberry Open in 2009.