The BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth Club is set to provide the perfect vehicle for a week-long celebration as The European Tour prepares to commemorate the single most successful year in its history, when golf’s four Major Championship trophies joined The Ryder Cup in the Tour’s trophy cabinet.
In the time between last year’s BMW PGA Championship – won by Simon Khan over the re-modelled West Course – and this week’s event, The European Tour has seen its Members produce a clean sweep of golf’s grand slam events as well as regaining The Ryder Cup from the USA in Wales.
Graeme McDowell’s US Open victory at Pebble Beach last June was the beginning of a sequence of results that has seen The European Tour’s Membership dominate the sport’s most demanding contests.
Louis Oosthuizen blew the competition away at St Andrews to win the 150th Anniversary Open Championship, followed by Martin Kaymer at the US PGA Championship. Next stop was The Celtic Manor Resort as Colin Montgomerie’s European Team overcame the USA to reclaim The Ryder Cup before Charl Schwartzel made it four Major successes in a row when he won the Masters Tournament earlier this year to claim the Green Jacket.
With the big prizes secured, the Tour’s Membership turned their attention to the Official World Golf Ranking as their sustained excellence around the world saw them catch and then pass Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at the very summit of the game’s ranking system.
Lee Westwood brought Woods’ dominance to an end last October before Kaymer put together a run of form (winning four tournaments in five months) befitting the world’s best to take over from Westwood in February. The Englishman has since won twice (in Indonesia and Korea) to reclaim the Number One spot, but Kaymer, Luke Donald and McDowell are all now regularly jostling for the title of World Number One.
No matter which of those men begins or ends the BMW PGA Championship at the top, one thing is for certain: The European Tour’s finest have been the best in the business over the past year.
There can be fewer more appropriate settings to stage such a high-profile edition of The Tour’s flagship event than the West Course at Wentworth Club, the location of The European Tour’s headquarters and the stage for so many unforgettable European Tour moments from past PGA Championships to World Match Play Championships.
There will, of course, be one man remembered more than any this week as the Tour begins the week with Monday’s Ole Seve! Pro-Am competition to raise funds for the Championship’s Official Charity, the Seve Ballesteros Foundation.
Seve won the PGA and five World Match Plays at Wentworth, so where better to celebrate the life of the man who is rightly lauded as the single most influential European golfer in history in terms of his contribution to the game and the influence he had in making The European Tour what it is today?
The golfing genius, who passed away earlier this month, will not be far from anyone’s mind this week and the all-star cast assembling to do battle for the £4,500,000 prize fund will all be looking to produce the kind of drama and excitement that Seve could generate just by walking onto the first tee.
The cast is certainly worthy, with 11 Major Champions, six European Tour Number Ones and 103 European Tour tournament winners set to play a leading role in the celebration, and it is hoped, the continuation, of The European Tour’s unparalleled run of success.
