Friends again: What a 'perfect' World Golf Tour would look like

And we thought: Amen to that, Rors, old mate, particularly your advocacy for pumping the tyres of national opens, and shouting out to our Australian Open.

And it got us further thinking: what would a perfect golf calendar look like it? Indeed what would a genuine, all-in, world tour, sporting all the best players, playing the world’s great courses in multiple formats look like?

From this fan's perspective we would have:

The world’s top-200 players eligible for everything – PGA Tour, DP World Tour, LIV, TGL – the job lot. Independent contractors would choose where they play. Build it they’ll come.

We'd have stroke-play, match-play, teams golf.

The national Opens' prizemoney would match ‘Signature’ PGA Tour events. If a country's Open is worth $20 million and sufficient OWGR points, top players will travel, TV will follow, market forces rule.

Brooks Koepka, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas in simpler times. If they played against each other in teams it would be cool and spicy indeed. PHOTO: Getty Images

LIV teams would play TGL teams in LIV and TGL. Boston Common and Jupiter Links would play LIV events in Adelaide and Hong Kong. Cleeks and Majestix and Hy Flyers would play in Tiger and Rory’s hybrid Florida indoor whatsit.

You'd have Rory versus DJ, Smithy versus Min Woo, JT’s college boys head-to-head with Brooks’ blue-collar battlers. It would be tres spicy.

The OWGR would include LIV and TGL events because LIV and TGL would be meritocracies.

To that end, as we sue for peace after two years of angst, every player’s OWGR points would revert to their highest ranking at, and post, January 1, 2022.

On the January after he won his first Masters, Tiger Woods won the Johnnie Walker Classic at Blue Canyon Country Club in Phuket, Thailand. Be nice if he went back again. PHOTO: Getty Images

The PGA Championship would be a ‘world major’ and held on a different continent every year.

President’s Cup? Dead.

Ryder Cup? Three teams - one representing Rest of The World.

We’d call it the World Golf Tour (WGT). It would run from January through November. The Saudi PIF and Strategic Sports Group would fund and profit from it, and all the players would own a chunk.

And it would include 50 events from which eligible players would pick-n-choose.

• 14 PGA Tour ‘Signature’
• 10 DP World Tour (co-sanctioned Asia & Australasia) including national Opens
• 13 LIV Golf
• 8 The Golf League (TGL)
• 4 Majors
• Ryder Cup every two years.

Rory Mcilroy won the 2014 Australian Open. Were it worth his while to come again, he would. PHOTO: Getty Images

Granted … there may be some wrinkles to iron out. There’s money and maths we’d leave to the bean-counters and boffins.

In the interest of what we might call ‘growing the game’ several rich and egotistical people would be asked to take a haircut for the greater good, which granted again is not generally a trait of rich and egotistical people.

And of course, our idea for the 'perfect' tour would differ from Rory McIlroy’s which would differ from Jay Monahan’s which would differ from many if not most PGA Tour players’, chaps whose ‘world view’ begins at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida and ends at Pebble Beach, California.

Two of the world's best players, Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm, should be playing for OWGR points in every tournament they tee it up. PHOTO: Getty Images

Yet it's this sort of myopia and hubris that's led PGA Tourists to believe in the primacy of a rota of generic 72-hole stroke-play events played on generic golf courses with generic holes surrounded by generic corporate tents, with everything in America outside the odd trip ‘overseas’ to Hawaii.

Nobody wants more of that, surely.

So! Here you go Jay, Yasir, Tiger, Rory, Patrick, Jordan, Phil, Sharky, Smithy, Strategic Sports Group and shadowy figure advising PGA Tour players that Golf Channel journos dubbed ‘Keyser Soze’, one golf fan’s crack at a let’s-all-get-together-and-feel-alright 2025 season of golf.

The Calendar: