As we reach the end of the Challenge Tour's online 25th year anniversary celebrations, europeantour.com spoke to the very first winner on the tour, Neal Briggs - who was also the first Number One and is now a highly-respected Tournament Director on the tour - about how the tour has evolved over the past quarter of a century...
Neal Briggs knows more than a thing or two about the Challenge Tour.
He was the winner of its very first event, the first person to be crowned the Challenge Tour Number One and is now a highly-respected Tournament Director who fronts one of the biggest tournaments of the season, the Kazakhstan Open.
Affectionately known to players and staff as ‘Briggsy’, there are few who have witnessed the rapid rise of the tour over the past 25 years as closely.
While he played nine full seasons on The European Tour during his playing days, he twice succeeded in graduating from the Challenge Tour.
The first time was as a fresh-faced pro in 1989 during the inaugural season of the Challenge Tour – then known as the PGA Satellite Tour – as he stormed to the top of the Rankings at the very start of the season by winning the maiden event, the Dei Tessali Open.
Briggs remained at the summit for the whole season, beating Joakim Haeggman, Costantino Rocca and Jamie Spence, amongst others, to the post.
“I remember the very first tournament,” he said. “I shot a 67 in the final round and went to the top of the Rankings and stayed there. That was a great feeling because there were some good players around then.”
The second time around, the Challenge Tour was no longer a stepping stone for Briggs but a pathway back to The European Tour as another superb season in 1994 secured a return to the top tier via a fifth place finish in the Rankings.
He remembers the challenges they encountered during those early days – language barriers, cheap rental cars and navigational issues in the days before GPS devices – all of which, of course, have since made for hilarious and timeless tales.
“It was all very basic back in those days,” he said. “You would fly and rent a car, but they would be nothing like the rental cars you get today.
“There would never be time to go home in between tournaments, but you just got on with it. Then you had courses out in the sticks and when you stopped at restaurants there would be no English menus, so it was more like pinning a tail on a donkey – you just pointed at something and hoped something you liked came out! But that was all part of the fun.
“I remember one time three players went to Tenerife for a tournament, but went out on the previous Thursday for a weekend practice round.
“They played their round and spent the rest of the time by the pool and at the bar. Then, when they turned up for the tournament, they had played the practice round on the wrong course!”
It is far from the professional environment in which players live nowadays, even away from the glitz and glamour of The European Tour.
“Back in those days there were not even practice balls at tournaments,” he said. “You took your own. Nowadays they have Titleist balls on the range, they have courtesy cars or buses waiting for them at the airports and the money on the Challenge Tour is now surpassing what the prize funds for European Tour events were back then.
“The Challenge Tour has grown so quickly, it’s incredible. You would never have dreamt of going to places like Kazakhstan, it was all Europe or the USA back then.
“But the quality of the players has become so good. I think a lot of it has come down to The Ryder Cup too, the money that comes from that and the fact that countries want to bring it to their shores.
“We have had so many great players come from the Challenge Tour and go on to play The Ryder Cup, the likes of Rocca or Martin Kaymer, so it has come full circle.”
While the lifestyle Briggs led during his days on the Challenge Tour was in stark contrast to that of players nowadays, he recently showed some of them a thing or two about swinging a club.
At the M2M Russian Challenge Cup near Moscow, an evening event was held where players were asked to hit a gong on a lake. As the playing professionals missed the target time and time again, Briggs stepped up and crashed a perfect shot against the tiny target in one go.
Still doing it on the Challenge Tour, 25 years later.
