Saudi requests offer glimpse of the future

AND so it begins. According to Golfweek magazine in the US, Lee Westwood, Tommy Fleetwood and defending champion Dustin Johnson are among the first tranche of eight players to apply for release waivers from the PGA Tour to play in the Saudi Invitational in February. There will be more. The Saudis couldn’t agree a way forward with the European and PGA Tours for their proposed global circuit so they bought the Asian Tour and shifted their invitational event from the Euro schedule to that one. It will take place after events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai on the European Tour and naturally there will be plenty of inducements on offer for the stars to stay an extra week. The default position of the PGA-Euro Tour alliance is to refuse such waivers — there will, after all, be an event taking place in the same region that week on the latter circuit — but will they do so when push comes to shove? Could this end up being the first of the legal battles that Paul McGinley bleakly suggested in these pages recently might well be the sport’s fate over the next few years?