A new foundation tour or an opportunity for current full time Golfers?

Last month saw the completion of the first showing of the MENA Golf Tour here in the UAE. The event appeared a great success giving the opportunity for local professionals, amateurs and even a few from further afield to compete in a three-day tournament with substantial prize money. The golden prize for both the pro’s and amateurs was to be a start in the Dubai Desert Classic next season on the European Tour along with possible invitations to other Asian events.

As the local golf industry received the latest press releases from each event and results sheets came through via e-mail, I could not help to feel a little jealous that I was not taking part. Now I have to be very clear, my golf club gave all of our team the full backing to play and even sponsored a couple of visiting professionals during their time here, however to me it did not make any sense to play. With the membership structure tailored to encourage participants to play in all four events within four weeks through a hefty membership fee the commitment was too much. To make the event worthwhile professionals should be spending a good few hours a day practicing, then at least one day playing a practice round and that is without considering the three tournament days- in other words playing full time!

Unfortunately for a full time teaching professional who works mainly on the commission this is not financially viable. It would have been great to see a temporary membership available to play in one or two events through the series giving the opportunity for more of the local golf professionals to be able to take part. Only a handful of UAE based Professionals represented the region which seems a shame seeing as the clear amount of effort and organization went into the running of the MENA Tour.

The UAE PGA run a series of one-day events that are generally well supported by local Professionals and they are over either one or two days. This is genuinely something to look forward to as they are well organized and far easier to fit into working schedules.

Looking at how other tours are run, especially in Asia, many of the local Professionals received sponsors invites and are granted temporary membership of the tours. Maybe they do not win the event but it gives an opportunity for your ‘club pro’ to pit their skills against full-time tournament professionals.
It will be of great interest how the officials at the MENA Tour decide to run the next outing. A job certainly well done in terms of publicity and to get a tour up and running- but to increase entries and participation the tour needs to be accessible to all, especially if it wishes to become a true foundation and developmental tour for the future.

All the best from the Links,

Craeg Deery