There has been plenty to celebrate both on and off the golf course in 2022 and our season-ending DP World Tour Championship, Dubai undoubtedly provided a spectacular finale befitting of our 50th anniversary year.
A milestone season which began with the European Tour’s group main Tour being renamed the DP World Tour following a ground-breaking evolution to our long-term partnership with DP World, ended with us crowning three truly worthy champions at our fifth and final Rolex Series event of 2022.
Jon Rahm extended his remarkable record by becoming not only the first player to win the DP World Tour Championship on three separate occasions, but also the first to win five Rolex Series titles. Equally impressive was Rory McIlroy’s accomplishment of lifting the Harry Vardon Trophy for the fourth time to end a magnificent 2022 campaign as World Number One, FedEx Cup Number One and now the DP World Tour’s Number One.
Both Jon and Rory are incredible ambassadors for our game who will be hugely important for Europe in next year’s Ryder Cup in Rome, so I was delighted they were joined in the prize giving ceremony at Jumeirah Golf Estates by another inspirational champion, Sweden’s Rasmus Lia.
Rasmus won our G4D event which took place on the Earth Course on the Friday and Saturday, the 22 year old finishing four shots clear of the field to become the fourth different winner in the G4D Tour’s inaugural season, joining World Number One Kipp Popert, Mike Browne and Tommaso Perrino.
Seeing Rasmus, Jon and Rory holding their respective trophies aloft in front of packed galleries on the 18th green at Jumeirah Golf Estates was another moment of immense pride for everyone involved with the European Tour group, including our Chairman David Williams who marked his final event in the role after nine transformational years.
This year’s DP World Tour Championship was sold-out at the weekend for the first time, continuing a trend we have seen this year at some of our biggest events, with ticketing and hospitality revenue up 32 per cent compared to 2019, the last year before the pandemic, for the Betfred British Masters, Horizon Irish Open, Genesis Scottish Open and BMW PGA Championship.
We welcomed a record crowd of 68,491 over the four tournament days at Jumeirah Golf Estates, which has hosted our season-finale since 2009 and, which we announced on the eve of our 2023 season beginning, will continue to do so through to at least 2031.
Another announcement we made in the wake of our hugely successful first season as the ‘DP World Tour’ was a return to our season-long contest being known as the ‘Race to Dubai Rankings presented by Rolex’. The Race to Dubai, of course, became part of our terminology in 2009 and provides us with a strong narrative across the season as we build towards our final destination and ultimately crown our champion.
In 2023, that journey will take in a minimum of 39 tournaments in 26 different countries, underlining our position as golf’s global Tour. Our players will also compete for a record overall prize fund of $144.2 million, including a $6million bonus pool and tournament prize funds of $9million at the first four Rolex Series events prior to our $10million finale in Dubai.
For the first time, we are also introducing a new Earnings Assurance Programme, which means exempt players in categories 1-17 will be guaranteed minimum earnings of $150,000 if they compete in 15 or more of our events.
This security is huge for our members, especially during these times of global economic uncertainty and particularly for the 20 players who graduated from the Challenge Tour, the 28 players who came through Qualifying School and those players who earned cards through the global pathways we have created with the Sunshine Tour and ISPS HANDA PGA Tour of Australasia.
Our operational joint venture with the PGA TOUR, announced in June, has enabled us to introduce many of these enhancements for 2023, as well as guaranteeing prize fund growth for at least the next four season after this one.
There will, of course, be added incentive for our members in the new season, with the leading ten players, not otherwise exempt, on our 2023 Race to Dubai earning PGA TOUR cards for the following season.
For the European players, there is also the opportunity to qualify for Luke Donald’s Ryder Cup team in Rome, and after recently announcing Nicolas Colsaerts as his third Vice Captain, alongside Thomas Bjørn and Edoardo Molinari, Luke will get the chance to see some of his potential team members in match play action when the inaugural Hero Cup opens the 2023 calendar year at Abu Dhabi Golf Club.
The interest from fans wishing to be at Marco Simone for the Ryder Cup has been nothing short of phenomenal, with more than 700,000 ticket applications from 130 different countries. That underlines the point I made earlier about our biggest events getting even bigger and I think that is a trend you will continue to see in a world where we are saturated with content.
The Ryder Cup will unquestionably be a highlight of 2023, but if our spectacular 2022 season is anything to go by, it will be one of many.
