Asian Tour increasing in popularity as LIV stars go after OWGR points.

In a new book out The Secret Tour Caddy the story of the 2023 season is revealed through the eyes of a veteran Tour caddy.

I have read some of it recently and it's well worth it, with unique insight when the cameras are off, of the relationship between caddy and player and their travails as they travel through 27 countries, and as importantly the caddy's perspective on the mess the financial state of the game is currently in.

Ranking/ owgr points

Along those lines TSTC states they considered the PGA Tour, then the European Tour (DP World) have been their priority ranking with the Japan Tour and the Asian Tour somewhere down the list.

With the arrival of LIV their ranking is now PGA Tour, LIV series, DP World Tour then the Asian Tour.

All that is in flux right now, it's not my intent here to get into all the negotiations, wrongs and rights of the past 2 years. 

However I will say with the Masters two months away and the other majors to follow with a variety of ways to enter, top 50 owgr is what drives this post today.

The PGA Tour has seven, DP has five events to acquire owgr points before Augusta, and the LIV has three events with no owgr points allowed, that's where the Asian Tour enters the picture. 

This week I covered the Magical Kenya Open with its worthy Dutch winner Darius van Driel and his journey to his first DP World Tour event.

At the same time over on the Asian Tour, the International Series  (10 events funded by LIV Golf) was staged in Oman where 21 of the 54 LIV series golfers were in the field. 

The winner Mexican Carlos Ortiz is one of them, Why were he and his colleagues in Oman?

Others like Louis Oosthuizen, Joaquin Niemann, Mito Pereira, Peter Uihlein, Lucas Herbert, Branden Grace, Dean Burmester, Sebastien Munoz and Matt Jones amongst others were also in. 

We know that many of the above were banned from the DP World Tour, in hindsight a bad decision, imagine if they were all in Kenya.

The reason they were in Oman is not the money, the LIV's out of whack purses has already taken care of that, it is because they are going "owgr points hunting", something they are denied currently on LIV.

This puts the status of 3rd place for the current DP World Tour in a perilous position with the Asian Tour suddenly finding certain fields loaded with quality they never had before.

TSTC chronicles the folly of the DP WORLD Tour allowing their 10 best players full PGA Tour status, with stars like Matthieu Pavon, Sami Valimaki, Nicolai Hojgaard, Robert MacIntyre, Thomas Detry and Eric van Rooyen now flourishing in the States, rather than in Kenya.

Hopefully some form of the new order of the game will be announced after current negotiations involving all well documented parties are concluded, Masters week hopefully will have given them enough time.

Right now the Asian Tour is enjoying their strongest days under their LIV masters.

Bryan Angus