Among those people are an army of DP World Tour fans who simply cannot accept that a circuit resembling the one once named the European Tour that competed with the PGA Tour in the 1990s is no longer feasible.

With the conclusion of the 2023 season in Dubai at the weekend, the top-10 players on the final Race to Dubai points list have officially earned their way to the PGA Tour.

For many, that is seen as the ultimate capitulation on the part of Keith Pelley to the game’s professional bully, the PGA Tour.

(Not, of course, by the 10 players who will now play for the ludicrously and potentially unsustainably large purses in the U.S but that’s another story).

The reality is, however, somewhat more complex than a simple ‘giving up’ on the part of the game’s historically second biggest Tour.

It simply makes official what has been the reality for the best part of two decades: the European Tour – sorry DP World Tour – is now an official feeder circuit for the more lucrative U.S Tour.

For those who find this reality hard to accept there are a few things to consider.

The first is that the importance of every professional golf tournament – and its appeal to sponsors – has a direct correlation with the players teeing up.

In the 80s and 90s Europe had ‘the big five’ of Langer, Faldo, Woosnam, Lyle and Seve. It’s not difficult to see why sponsors might have been keen to invest in a Tour that bore those names.

In the 2020s that is simply not true. That’s not a knock on those who play the DP World Tour full time, it is simply a reality that even most of the players would acknowledge.

The other side of that coin is, of course, the players themselves. What would it take to lure away some of the bigger names of the PGA Tour to make a viable alternative in Europe?

Money, of course, though there’s more to it than that. What LIV has shown is just how eye watering the dollars need to be to guarantee the involvement of the game’s top stars, especially if you intend to ask them to play outside the borders of the U.S.

"For many, that is seen as the ultimate capitulation on the part of Keith Pelley to the game’s professional bully, the PGA Tour ... The reality is, however, somewhat more complex than a simple ‘giving up’ on the part of the game’s historically second biggest Tour." - Rod Morri.

And that’s the important flip side. The game’s best and most marketable players almost universally WANT to play in America.

One country, one currency, easy travel, tax friendly states to choose from in terms of living … what’s not to like?

Nothing is universally true, of course, and there will always be some players (Eddie Pepperell is one that springs to mind) who prefer the adventure of playing in Europe.

But the truth for the vast majority is that given the choice, they would opt for the U.S every time and the proof is in the pudding because that is exactly what almost every top European player has done since the turn of the century.

We are in the midst of a fundamental reshaping of the men’s professional game, and it is yet to be determined what that might ultimately look like.

But Europe being one of two dominant Tours competing to attract the game’s top players as it did in the latter part of the 20th century seems unlikely to be a part of it.

Not just in the immediate future, but ever.