Tournament sponsors have a right to expect more from top golfers

The new DP World Tour season kicks off in Australia this week. It is barely two weeks since Europe’s very best battled it out in Dubai at the DP World Tour Championship, with Matt Fitzpatrick winning the event and Rory McIlroy claiming the Race to Dubai title for the seventh time. He is now just one behind Colin Montgomerie and will surely match the Scot next year.

A decent field will assemble in Queensland for the BMW Australian PGA Championship. I am especially impressed to see Marco Penge making the trip Down Under. Bearing in mind that he won three times in 2025 and secured a PGA Tour card, it would have been entirely understandable had he opted to put his feet up for a few weeks. But not a bit of it. He is straight back into the heat of battle.

And McIlroy will be in the field for next week’s Australian Open - a real coup for the tournament organisers.

Now, I am a simple soul. I love playing golf and I love watching it. I also derive great pleasure from writing about it and researching the game. Previewing golf tournaments involves a fair amount of research and, to be frank, can be a pretty thankless task.

I recently wrote a preview for The RSM Classic, the season-ending event on the PGA Tour. To do this, I checked out both the PGA Tour website and the tournament and sponsor’s websites. These gave me the names of all the players who were going to be taking part. 

But when the tournament actually got under way, almost every player that I had chosen to highlight had decided that they didn’t fancy playing after all. It is frustrating enough for me but for the sponsors who pour such vast sums into these events it can amount to a kick in the teeth. If you are advertising your event and tell fans that Players A, B, C and D are going to take part because they have committed to do so then you have every right to feel pretty peeved when all of them decide that they really don’t fancy it.

One such non-appearance was Alex Noren. The Swede was languishing way down the FedEx Cup standings. On the face of it, this meant he would be losing his playing privileges for 2026. However, Noren had returned to the DP World Tour and won both the British Masters and the BMW PGA Championship - and that meant he was guaranteed to win one of the 10 PGA Tour cards on offer. 

I was also surprised that Aaron Rai had opted not to play at the RSM after initially entering as he lay just outside the top 50 in the FedEx Cup. There is a special incentive for making that top 50 because it guarantees a place in all next season’s highly lucrative Signature Events. Then I realised that his world ranking of 23 means he is almost certain to make those tournaments anyway. But that still does not explain why he would enter a tournament and then pull out.

Much is said and written about the massive sums of money on offer to the world’s best professional golfers but please, let’s not forget that the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the LPGA Tour depend on tournament sponsors. When these sponsors sign multi-year deals to support tournaments, guarantees are given. You wouldn’t pour, say, $8m into a tournament unless you could be sure that there would be some household names turning up to play.

(Image Credit: Kevin Diss Photography)

Interestingly, McIlroy has recently reminded Europe’s best golfers that they have a duty to support their home tour rather than spending the vast majority of their time in America. And he speaks from a position of strength as somebody who has played in India this year, will play in Australia next week and will once again compete at the Dubai Desert Classic. And that’s without taking into account his regular participation in events such as the Scottish Open, Irish Open and BMW PGA Championship.

While the PGA Tour now goes into hibernation until January, it remains a busy time for the DP World Tour, with some lucrative tournaments in the coming weeks - the Australian Open, the Nedbank Challenge and the Alfred Dunhill Championship.

McIlroy said: "The DP World Tour, with everything that's gone down in the game of golf, has somehow found itself in a very strong position. It is amazing that we have so many huge tournaments from the start of September through to the end of January and means the DP World Tour is the shining light of golf during that time frame.

"It's amazing that all of the players that are coming to play in those events, and hopefully that continues for a long time." 

DP World has just signed a new long-term deal with the tour. On the face of it everything in the garden looks rosy but we all know that is not actually the case.

As Daniel Van Otterdijk, DP World's group chief Communications officer, said: "The only solution to the golfing world is for all three major parties to come together. That's LIV/Asian Tour, European Tour and the PGA Tour, because, if nothing else, golf fans want that."

And that brings me to my final point. While I agree with Van Otterdijk, a peace deal seems as far away as it has ever been. It is no secret that I am not a fan of LIV Golf and of course I want unity. 

But while we wait for that, LIV golfers are unable to play on the PGA Tour. However, I have looked at the field for both tournaments coming up in Australia and I wish somebody could explain to me exactly why the likes of Cameron Smith, Marc Leishman and Abraham Ancer, who are LIV players, are able to play in a DP World Tour event? There needs to be some clarity, guidance and leadership here.