£3.2m prize fund and points at stake in Dunhill Cup shake-up

Steve Scott, The Courier, 16 October 2000

After 16 years of sweat, tears, not a little bit of humiliation and finally indifference, the Alfred Dunhill Cup will be discontinued and transformed into the most lucrative golf tournament in Europe.

The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship will be based at the Old Course but also at the Carnoustie Championship Course and the much-admired Kingsbarns Links - just down the road from St Andrews - from October 18-21 next year, and will carry a whopping prize-fund of £3.25 million.

Unlike the cup, the links championship will be a fully-fledged Tour event, with winnings counting for the Order of Merit and the Ryder Cup points race.

The details are still a little sketchy, but the event appears to be loosely based on the old Bing Crosby event, now known as the AT&T National Pro-Am, played at Pebble Beach on the US Tour every January.

There, celebrity amateurs play three rounds with the pros over three venues before a 54-hole cut allows the pros to for the big money on the final day at the host course.

The Alfred Dunhill event will retain a semblance of a team element but the national teams format - which lasted a lot longer than many believed it would - is to be lost.

Johann Rupert - chief executive of Richemont, the South African parent company of Alfred Dunhill - declined the opportunity to be quizzed by Pressmen but did speak on Sky TV at the weekend about the new event.

“We felt it was time for a change,” he said. “It will be like the AT&T but not exactly the same.

“The prize money will be five million dollars, but it will not cost us much more than it did this year. You understand about appearance fees - I am a traditionalist and I feel it is wrong that appearance fees are sometimes more than prize money.

“If the top players don’t want to come then we are going to have fun anyway celebrating links golf. It’s sad that the best players in the world only play links golf once a year at the Open.

The present format had outlived its welcome, judging by the size of the crow in perfect weather at St Andrews this week, but it remains to be seen whether the new tournament will be any more attractive to players or spectators.

The huge prize-fund and points for the Order of Merit and Ryder Cup - although the race for the 2003 team will not have begun when the tournament is staged next year - should at least ensure a full complement of top European players.

But while the cash is considerable and half a million dollars more than is being offered at the Las Vegas Invitational on the US Tour this week, their budget over and above the prize fund includes appearance fees, which appears to have been ruled out by the tournament organisers here.

The main attraction to the top American players will be the Old Course and Carnoustie but they may feel they see enough of those two venues at Open Championship time.

Certainly, without any appearance money, there is next to no chance of Tiger Woods’ presence.

The question of playing in Scotland in late October also rears its head - Walter Woods, the former head greenkeeper of the Old Course, always described the Dunhill as a winter tournament - although, to be fair, the last cup to be significantly affected by the weather was in 1994.

The Alfred Dunhill Cup will be mourned by few - although some players were proud to play for their country - but it did provide memorable moments. Scotland’s defeats to Paraguay and India will never be forgotten, nor Colin Montgomerie's comment prior to the Paraguay match in 1993—”If we can't beat them we might as well go home.”

But Scotland did win memorably in 1995, and there were other surprises - Spain’s Santiago Luna beating Tiger Woods two years ago, or Canada winning in 1994 with a largely unknown trio beating an American side consisting of Fred Couples, Tom Kite and Curtis Strange in the final.

Martin the toast

Extract from article by Brian Meek, The Herald, 16 October 2000

.....So it's farewell to the Dunhill Cup and hello to the Dunhill Links Championship, which will be played next year over the Old Course, where the final round will take place, the new Kingsbarns Links just outside St Andrews and the Americans' all-time favourite, Carnoustie.

The tournament will be played as a 72-hole stroke-play event in a Pro-Am format with a total prize money of $5million. Just as significant is the fact that the tournament will be officially sanctioned by the European Tour and that official money and Ryder Cup points can be earned.

Whether the public will be excited by a tournament full of Brucies, Tarbies and Ronnie Corbetts, all hard to recognise in bobbly hats, in which rounds may take up to six hours, in October is arguable to say the least. The organisers, however, are bullish.

Johann Rupert, the chief executive of Richemont, the company who own Dunhill, declared: "We are determined to celebrate links golf. If the top players don't want to come then we are going to have fun anyway.

"It is sad that the best players in the world may only play links golf once or twice a year."

Dunhill, rightly, are simply seeking to maximise their investment and to change a rather tired format. There are some countries in the Far East where celebrity golf is a more popular on television than pro tournaments.

As far as Scotland is concerned the new tournament is good for business and tourism. We will now have three major events held here next year - the Loch Lomond tournament (with prize money of £2m) and the Scottish PGA at Gleneagles.

All of this is good in terms of Scotland's bid to host the 2009 Ryder Cup.

There are now six courses in the running to be hosts - Loch Lomond, Gleneagles, Turnberry, Carnoustie, St Andrews and Muirfield though, as Government backing is required, it is difficult to see how the last-named, at which there are no women members, would pass any politically correct test.

Dunhill Cup: Martin seals dramatic finale

Extract from article by Lewine Mair, Daily Telegraph, 16 October 2000

.....From next year, the tournament will become the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, which will be played on Oct 18-21 over Kingsbarns, Carnoustie and St Andrews. The format will take in three pro-am rounds with the professionals going it alone on the final day.

Though they recognise how important pro-ams are in the greater scheme of things, most of the professionals will tell you that one pro-am round a week is entirely enough. Take Ian Woosnam, for example . . . at the start of last week, he suggested, lightly, that his experiences in the single pro-am on the eve of this event were such that he was not inclined to come back for a triple helping next year.

One of his playing companions hit a car with his tee shot at the first and the Old Course Hotel with his tee shot at the second. "And he was supposed to have a five handicap," said the exasperated Welshman.

What might make up for the format, at least in the professionals' eyes, is the prize money, with the $5 million purse set to be the biggest on Europe's 2001 European Tour.

Meanwhile, there is one more significant change afoot at the so-called Home of Golf. For the first time in their long history, the R&A are about to provide accommodation for women golfers.

Though the accommodation in question is across the road rather than in R&A headquarters, it is no outside privy but part of the R&A's multi-million pound development of the old St Andrews Woollen Mill.

As you would expect, it has given rise to the inevitable question as to whether, in this misogynistic golfing land, there will be a chain reaction?

Martin retains reign of Spain

Extract from article by Mike Aitken, The Scotsman, 16 October 2000

....Spain, of course, won't be back to defend their title since the nations cup format is no longer part of this event in 2001. However, official confirmation that the Alfred Dunhill Links championship will carry a staggering £3.4 million in prize money was a huge boost for Scotland's Ryder Cup bid. The Dunhill, in fact, will be the richest event in Europe next season.

Spain, of course, won’t be back to defend their title since the nations cup format is no longer part of this event in 2001. However, official confirmation that the Alfred Dunhill Links championship will carry a staggering £3.4 million in prize money was a huge boost for Scotland’s Ryder Cup bid. The Dunhill, in fact, will be the richest event in Europe next season.

In tandem with the World Invitational at Loch Lomond, which is expected to increase prize money to £2 million in 2001, and the Scottish PGA, which will also raise the pot at Gleneagles to £650,000, tournaments in Scotland next year will contribute over £6 million to the European Tour’s kitty.

Moreover, when the Open returns to Muirfleld in 2002, Scottish events will offer around £9 million in prizes that season - a staggering amount of money, even by American standards.

This investment in tournament golf means that Scotland will put more into the Tour’s coffers than all the other candidates for the Ryder Cup -Wales, the North-east of England and Sweden - put together.

Coming hard on the heels of the Bank of Scotland’s decision to support Scotland’s bid, hopes of capturing the 2009 Ryder Cup match look much more realistic than they did six months ago.

Although the rise in prize money at the Dunhill appears enormous, tournament organisers indicated the new pro-am won’t actually cost them all that much more. The inference was that around £2 million had been spent on appearance money this year - a ridiculous amount for a field without Tiger Woods. Next season, no appearance money will be paid.

“The new tournament will not cost us much more,” said Johann Rupert, the chief executive of Dunhill’s parent company. “As a traditionalist I feel it is wrong that appearance fees are sometimes more than the prize money.”

While the Old Course will be used for the final day’s play, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns are also to be part of the links extravaganza. Prize money will be official and count towards Ryder Cup points.

Ken Schofield, the executive director of the European Tour, welcomed the expansion of the Dunhill and said the new format would have “even greater significance.”

While that may be true, the players are unlikely to enjoy their week more than Spain did as the unlikely figure of Martin inspired another success.

Spain rise up from Valley of Sin

Extract from article by David Davies, The Guardian, 16 October 2000

....And so the Dunhill Cup passes, largely unmourned, leaving not so much memories as a welter of statistics. Since it started in 1985 the lowest score has been Curtis Strange's 62 in 1987 and the highest by a Mexican, Carlos Espinosa, with an 87.

Only seven players have won all five of their matches and only one, Goosen, has done it twice, when helping South Africa win in '97 and '98. Three of the players competing yesterday, Jimenez, Els and Frost, jointly hold the record for the most games played, 36.

Nick Faldo is at the top of the "averages" with 13 games won out of 18. Greg Norman, in second place, won 22 of his 31 games and Woosnam, given limited chances because of the invitational nature of the event, won 16 of his 24 games.