Race To Dubai / Bill Elliott / 14 January 2009 / Leave a comment

Bill Elliott is impressed by the players on show for the real opening event of the 2009 season, but sees reasons to be concerned in the long run.

So here we are chaps in 2009 and somewhere out there people are preparing to play golf again. Proper golf of course.

After schlepping around this place and that over the last couple of weeks, the European Tour finally gets to blow some kind of trumpet with the opening event in the three week Desert Swing. Tomorrow it is the Abu Dhabi Championship, next week it is Qatar's turn and then Dubai. Sun, sand and, er, golf.

Good fields too. World number two Sergio Garcia is in action this week, as is Padraig Harrington and Trevor Immelman. Who would have thought we could have said that the winners of three of last year's majors are in town without mentioning an American? Happy days indeed.

This power-packed trio is backed up by the likes of Paul Casey, defending champion Martin Kaymer (one of my top tips to scale new heights this year), good, old Colin Montgomerie, Henrik Stenson, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Oliver Wilson, Ross Fisher and the boy born to succeed, Rory McIlroy.

This is some cast list and a posse of names that throws up an even bigger posse of intriguing questions. Like will Garcia continue to display the sort of form that has lifted him at least within a couple of miles of Tiger's heels? Will Harrington explode on to the scene or will Ireland's greatest living sportsman start as quietly and hesitantly as he did this time last year? Will Monty find something, anything, to ignite his old game again and will McIlroy start to really stamp his authority on the rest?

As ever, who knows what will happen. My own guess is that Kaymer will make a fist of his defence, that McIlroy will continue to impress and that Stenson will probably win. The big thing here though is that we have serious golf on our hands - and television sets - once again and for this we should give thanks.

This desert yomp is important. The courses are immaculately prepared, the weather should be the acceptable side of fab and so the European Tour suddenly looks cool and glamorous compared to its bigger American rival. There is, however, a potential downside.

The European circuit is now deeply tied financially to the Middle East and, specifically, Leisurecorp, the Dubai based company that the sheiks have charged with bringing global exposure to the area. It is this initiative that has brought about the Race to Dubai multi-million dollar bonanza and that has lifted the Euro circuit so much higher in the estimation of so many star players.

The financial news from Dubai, however, is not as good as it was. Property prices apparently have plunged over the last six months and the old spend, spend, spend mentality may be about to change. This is not to suggest that the Race to Dubai is in jeopardy but it is to suggest that the Arabs increasingly are going to wish to see a return for their money.

The first hurdle to clamber over here is the quality of the field and this has been achieved this week. But there will need to be a lot more of this sort of thing on display in the coming weeks. Right now the American circuit is not too much of a distraction for Europe's finest but it is how the Tour hierarchy handle the continued presence of star names that will define not just this season but several to come.

Certainly the prize-money on offer this week is not in itself big enough to encourage such a stellar attendance so it is probably not daft to assume that appearance fees have been offered to many of the players or at least serious incentives of some kind. Somewhere out there is the monster known as The Credit Crunch but you won't find much evidence of it in pro golf. Yet.