The Asian Tour returns after 20 months of pandemic inaction in Thailand this week, buoyed by a $200-million cash injection from Australian great Greg Norman into 10 new lucrative tournaments from next year.
When the $1m Blue Canyon Championship tees off on Thursday on the idyllic Thai island of Phuket, the first shots will be played on the Asian Tour since the Malaysian Open on 7 March 2020.
The restart comes just weeks after Norman shook up the world of golf by announcing his new Saudi-backed series of 10 events from 2022, triggering speculation that it could be the first step towards the Great White Shark’s oft-touted dream of a golf ‘super league’.
Asian Tour commissioner and CEO Cho Minn Thant insists Norman’s move is not a takeover of the circuit and his priority is to finish the 2019-20 campaign, which ground to a halt to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
“This week will help us to finally begin the process of completing our season, following the most difficult period in our history,” Cho told asiantour.com.
Australia’s Wade Ormsby has led the order of merit since winning the Hong Kong Open in January 2020.
He will head a strong field for back-to-back events in Phuket which will also feature home favourite Jazz Janewattananond and American John Catlin, fresh off a top-10 finish in the $9m DP World Tour Championship in Dubai this past Sunday.
Jazz, the 2019 Order of Merit champion, will be joined by Asian Tour luminaries such as Scott Hend of Australia and Shiv Kapur of India in the 144-player field.
Players will make the short journey next week to the Laguna Phuket Championship, followed by two more $1m events slated for Singapore in January to round off the longest season in Asian Tour history.
Both Thai events will be played in bio-bubble conditions, without spectators, and players have to be fully vaccinated to compete.
Resuming play in Asia had been complicated by the variation in Covid-19 rules across different countries.
But Thailand dropped its strict quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated visitors, allowing the Tour to stage the back-to-back tournaments in Phuket.
The 2022 season schedule is yet to be announced but will begin with the $5m Saudi International in early February, which is not be part of the 10-event series funded by the Norman-helmed LIV Golf Investments.
The company is majority-owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, which was behind the recent takeover of Premier League football club Newcastle United.
The Gulf kingdom’s move into sport has brought allegations of ‘sportswashing’ – buying positive publicity to distract from its human-rights record.
But Cho said the new partnership would help the Asian Tour stabilise and recover from the impact of the Covid shutdown.
“To have 10 tournaments with prize money above $1m each has basically never before been seen on the Asian Tour,” Cho told AFP. “It’s very likely to be the Asian Tour’s most lucrative season.”
© Agence France-Presse
