Skip to main content

European Tour chief executive George O'Grady says collaboration with PGA Tour will continue

George O'Grady: European Tour chief executive insists "collaboration" with the PGA Tour will continue
Image: George O'Grady: European Tour chief executive insists "collaboration" with the PGA Tour will continue

European Tour chief executive George O'Grady insists "collaboration" with the PGA Tour will continue in the coming years.

More from Golf

Comfort zone

During the BMW PGA Championship in May, Lee Westwood called on the European Tour and PGA Tour to co-ordinate their tournaments to ensure more players did not stay in the "comfort zone" of the United States. The Wentworth event is the only one of the European Tour's 46 tournaments in 2013 being staged in England, compared to six in South Africa and three in China, with 21 events being held in Europe and 25 outside. Waters said that the players were already having more input into the schedule, adding: "There is going to be more dialogue with them. We are going to try to plan further ahead. "The PGA Tour is competition for us and it's healthy because it keeps us on our toes and trying to up our game all the time, but there are times when the Europeans will come back and play and we are going to work around that. "We don't necessarily want all of the players to play in the same tournaments. We want to spread them around. "There are probably 20 or so European names, or international names because the South African players are very supportive, and we are going to sit down with them and work a bit more on them supporting their national Opens first, and then see how we can work that into the schedule. "It's important for us to have those top players committed because we can then go and sell those weeks to the sponsors. Golf has always been the other way around; you try to sell the tournament and then think about how you can get the players there. That's becoming increasingly challenging."

Sky Data Layer Viewer