OpinionLeft Field: Appearance fees key to Hong Kong Open
To attract the world's top players, city will have to dig deep now that the tournament has been demoted by the European Tour
The tail end of the year is wheelbarrow time in Asia and, let's face it, unless Hong Kong has deep pockets the city will miss out on the big-name golfers in the future, especially now the European Tour has moved the penultimate leg in the Race To Dubai from Fanling to Antalya, Turkey, next November.
The Race To Dubai, the European Tour's merit contest, has helped the Hong Kong Open attract a strong field since 2009 - the first year the sheikhs got into the picture - as many of the leading players jostle for a place in the elite 60-field, season-ending US$8.5 million money-spinner in Dubai, where the top 10 are guaranteed a share of the bonus pool.
It's big bucks so players turn up in Hong Kong striving to make the top 60. It was all rosy for Hong Kong, but no more. The European Tour has found a new paramour in Antalya and the US$7 million Turkish Open will replace the Hong Kong Open in 2013 as the must-go-to event for Europe's elite professionals.
It's as if we had been married to the European Tour since 2002 but have now been traded in, discarded like a forlorn wife, for a younger, wealthier partner.
And to rub salt in the wound, European Tour boss George O'Grady had the gall to warn Hong Kong the tour would not "write cheques to sponsor Hong Kong" unless we unearthed sponsors. The euro zone financial crisis has hit the European Tour hard this year and it has been forced to cancel five tournaments, unsurprisingly four of them in Spain.
"We might look rich, but we're not. We can't just write cheques to sponsor Hong Kong," Grady said. "Sponsors can choose whether they want to keep Hong Kong going."