The European Tour hopes a significantly improved course can give a much-needed boost to the PGA Championship which, despite some notable absences, has plenty of attractions including Ian Poulter and Justin Rose
Properly pinpointing the status of the BMW PGA Championship has not been particularly easy in recent times. Criticism of the Wentworth venue was commonplace and commonly vehement, to the extent where Europe’s finest players did not deem the tournament worthy of participation despite it being one of precious few in Great Britain or Ireland.
The BBC withdrew live television coverage, albeit that this was part of a bigger, depressing picture. And then, in what was surely a strategic error, the European Tour’s chief executive, Keith Pelley, broke with what had been his own organisation’s convention by insisting this was no longer its “flagship event”. Meanwhile, tournaments such as the Irish Open were rising in stature and purses on the opposite side of the Atlantic were dwarfing those in Europe like never before.
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