General / Tareq Quiroz / 07 October 2009 / Leave a comment

Tareq Quiroz highlights the form players from the Tour in recent weeks

"Spain is always producing top class players and no sooner are we marveling at the new and exciting Alvaro Quiros then another comes along. Rafael Cabrera-Bello is the new kid on the block and boy is he making an impression."

The seemingly never ending FedEx Cup is finally over and thankfully we can all now turn our minds to something else. With all the razzmatazz that surrounds the PGA Tour it is often so easy to overlook the European action and all that is has to offer. Sure, I can't imagine many players drawing a circle around the Moravia Silesia Open in the Czech Republic at the start of the season as a 'must play'. But hey, make no mistake the PGA Tour has plenty of those events too.

Not only is the European Tour a much improved place to play with some truly great events, but the standard of players is most certainly on the up as well. We saw with the Vivendi Trophy a couple of weeks ago what kind of strength in depth there is out there. And as we are talking hot players, then the first name on your list has to be Simon Dyson. Two European Tour wins in the last month or so have catapulted him into the limelight. And rightly so.

I won't try and pretend that my current propensity for heaping praise on Dyson isn't slightly affected by the fact that I backed him for both his wins. He has lined my pockets and now I am returning the favour in the form of a glowing review...though he hardly needs his pockets lining after scooping over half a million Euros with Monday's win in the Alfred Dunhill.

That aside there is no doubt in my mind that this talented Yorkshireman has now taken his game up to its highest level yet. He won twice in 2006, but this is a different Dyson and I would be very surprised if he wasn't in next year's Ryder Cup team. He may not be as fashionable as some of the other top players in the world but it would be a mistake to underestimate him. Dyson could emerge as a force in world golf over the next few years.

Spain is always producing top class players and no sooner are we marveling at the new and exciting Alvaro Quiros then another comes along. Rafael Cabrera-Bello is the new kid on the block and boy is he making an impression. He has six top-10 finishes this season but his most notable achievement was his win in Austria. He produced an extraordinary final round 60 to snatch the victory and put his name in the public eye. This guy can play and there are definitely more wins to come. Is he the next Ballesteros, Olazabal or Garcia? Only time will tell but you can be sure that whatever happens it will be an entertaining journey.

If Dyson and Cabrera-Bello are the hot players on tour then the hot nation are the Swedes. We have had four different Swedish tour winners in the last four months and remarkably they don't include their top pair of Henrik Stenson and Robert Karlsson.

Clearly the lesson learnt is not to oppose the Swedes when in contention in the final round. These guys are ice cool super-competitors and more worryingly for the rest of the tour is the knowledge that there are plenty more of them.

I am pretty confident that these new stars may be the best ever. It's out with the old and in with the new so expect the next set of Euro hot players to feature even more new names. There are most definitely exciting times for the European Tour.

Tags: European Tour, Rafael Cabrera-Bello, Simon Dyson, Vivendi Trophy