BlogSaudi International Preview and Picks

The Buzz

Honestly, we at Golfstats try not to write anything political in nature. We try to stick with the overall premises that you folks are paying to get information on how players do, when they play well and when they do poorly. We stick primarily on our previews writing about the PGA Tour and any European Tour event with gambling interest. That is why we did Abu Dhabi and Dubai previews. There was a need for them.

For close to a year, we have followed the trials and tribulations of the Saudi International. When the event first was played in 2019, it was a nice addition to the European Tours middle east rota. It had everything needed to get a big professional golf event on the map, A place with unlimited funds, and was willing to spend anything to get an event. When it was first played, it received many rave reviews, but over time the political and human abuse problems of Saudi Arabia were too much. After last year’s event, the European Tour quietly dropped the event. When the European Tour dropped it, rumors circulated on how the event would be the home of the first World Golf Tour event that was trying to get going. Over the summer, the tour added Greg Norman as its CEO, and they went off to try and talk players into joining the tour.

The premise of the tour was to get the best players in the world to play a circuit of between 8 to 14 tournaments that would be held across the globe and would consist of 54 hole tournaments that would have different formats. Along the way, the Norman led organization became the Super Golf League and would play their first event as the Saudi International. Of course, the Saudi government put a lot of money into forming the league and would have the first event. Over the summer and early fall, the league alienated and put the fear of losing the top players into both the PGA and European Tours, with the first reaction being that those tours wouldn’t allow players to participate. Then the Super Golf League made an alliance with the Asian Tour, which forced the PGA and European Tour to enable players to participate in this one event.

Now the concept of having a “World Golf Tour” is not new. Greg Norman, in 1995 got the idea and put together a business plan and found several sponsors with deep pockets to have a tour made up of the best players in the world to travel the world and play golf in all parts of the globe. The PGA Tour quickly put the flames of that tour out, and soon afterward, to appease the players, the World Golf Championships started. At the time, the concept was brilliant, have all the main tours participate in three events that would be staged worldwide. They also bought the World Cup, an international team event that many loved the concept of. The first event was a match play tournament played in 1999 at LaCosta. It was followed by a World Golf Championship in Akron, Ohio, in August and a WGC event in Spain in November. The following year the events were played again to great success, and they added the WGC-World Cup, which was played in Argentina. Things started to go wrong when they decided to move the match play to Australia at the start of 2001. This received a lot of resistance from players who didn’t want to fly to Australia for playing and getting eliminated in the first round, and many of the top players didn’t play. They also ran into trouble in moving the WGC event from Spain to St. Louis, but the event was canceled for the year because of the 9/11 attack. The WGC-World Cup moved to Japan and was a success, but the truth of these events was starting to surface. Going outside of the United States brought on problems with getting big-time, deep pocket sponsorship, it just wasn’t there to support the events. By 2005 the WGC-World Cup played for the first time in Portugal, and after playing in the United States in 2003 and Spain in 2004, it was dropped. By 2007 the three WGC events were played in America, with the match play finding a new home in Arizona, the WGC-Bridgestone staying in Akron, and the WGC-Ca moving to Doral. So by then, these events were nothing more than events that looked like other PGA Tour events but with limited fields and a lot of money.

So after two decades, the World Golf Championship experiment was basically failed in the dream of having some form of a world golf tour. In 2022 there are just two WGC events still around, the Matchplay in Austin in March (which has never been played outside of the U.S. since 2001) and the WGC-HSBC in China, which hasn’t been played since 2019 and is scheduled for November, but the smart money is betting that it doesn’t happen.

So the big question is, will golf ever see a World Golf Tour? This Super Golf League seems to be hanging on a trend. It’s becoming a reality that they aren’t going to be able to sign up the Dustin Johnson’s, the Rory McIlroy’s, the Jon Rahm’s, and the top players in the world. Even with the possibility of these players being offered between $20 to $30 million to join the tour seems to be a no sell. Now the Norman tour appears to get Phil Mickelson, Ian Poulter, and Henrik Stenson to go along with it. Of course, Ian Poulter feels great for him to sign up and be offered between $20 to $30 million to play 12 weeks a year. But without the best players in the world, this tour won’t work. This concept has gotten ugly as the PGA Tour and European Tour will not allow it. There are rumors that Henrik Stenson has to make a big decision, taking up to $30 million to play on the tour or being the next European Tour Ryder Cup captain. There is no way that he will be able to do both, and that shows the big decisions left to players, take the money and be shut out of PGA and European Tour events. It’s unfortunate, and frankly, the reality is that this won’t happen.

So that leaves us with this right now. There are 21 of the top-50 players in the world that will be teeing up for a 72 hole event. On paper, it’s nothing more than an Asian Tour event that has a purse of $5 million, with the winner getting $833,333. Of the top-50 players, all received some form of compensation in free first-class travel to Saudi Arabia and probably for players like Kevin Na, Jhonattan Vegas, Jason Kokrak, and Joaquin Niemann getting around $25,000 to play. As for players like Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, and Phil Mickelson, the sky is unlimited all three are getting at least a million plus expense, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are getting more. Appearance fees have been a part of golf going back to the Tom Morris era 170 years ago. It will always continue, but at the end of the day, once a winner is crowned on Sunday and the players return home, people will forget about this tournament as it will be of little value to the players. Those on the PGA Tour won’t get FedExCup points, the same with European Tour players who don’t get Race to Dubai points. Yes, the winner will always be considered a champion, but many record books won’t include the win since it’s not part of the PGA or European Tours.

As for gambling, if we didn’t begin the prep work on this weeks ago, we wouldn’t be doing this preview. That’s because Draftkings and Fanduel have no Fantasy golf games, so many will not have any betting interest in this week. Again, in this day and age, if there isn’t a game to play, the interest wanes, which will happen this week.

One other thing I find very interesting, we had Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Adam Scott and Rory McIlroy playing in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai.  All four who made the trip from America to the middle east didn’t bother to make the 1,000 mile trip from Abu Dhabi to Jeddah.  Shows how some players feel over this.

Course information:

• Royal Greens G. & C.C.
• King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia
• 7,048 yards     Par 35-35–70

Located about 100 miles north of Jeddah, this course opened in 2017.  Situated on the east coast of the Red Sea, that course winds around what was once desert land with the 16th hole playing directly along the shore of the Red Sea.  No two consecutive holes play in the same direction.  Many of the holes bend making drives on the doglegs pretty demanding.  Dave Sampson and the European Golf Design company design and built the course in what amounts to a new town coming out of the desert.  The course is part of a housing development and when they built it, they designed it to be friendly for its members but they also knew the Saudi International would be played on it so they built it with that in mind.  Another element that Sampson kept in mind was the location on the Red Sea and how the wind would be a key element in course strategy.  Water comes into play on six holes plus over 60 bunkers are placed to gobble up wayward shots.  The grass is Pure Dynasty, a paspalum variety that allows the course to be irrigated with seawater, but now with a desalination plant that is being used and the course is very lush.  The course plays through valleys but you know it’s the desert landscape that has been kept up on either side of the holes. The greens have a lot of humps and mounds, and you need to hit the right section of the green to have a possibility of a one or two-putt.

The area around the golf course

King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) is the largest privately-funded new city in the world. Situated on the west coast of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KAEC covers an area of 181 square kilometres of land, approximately the size of Washington DC. KAEC comprises King Abdullah Port, the Coastal Communities residential districts, the Haramain Railway district and the Industrial Valley. The city is under development by Emaar, The Economic City, a publicly listed Saudi joint-stock company established in 2006.

Tips for playing Royal Greens

Wish I had some but unfortunately with no stats from the two years that Dustin Johnson played in the event it’s hard to see how the winner and runner-up has done right.  It’s easy to see that fairway accuracy isn’t really a key, but hitting greens is.  Also think that putting is very key on the tough greens of Royal Greens which has a lot of undulation in them.  So to set up a shot into the green a player has to make sure he sticks it on the right side of the pin so that he has a better putt at it.  A lot of desert courses are perfect for bombers, but we can see that isn’t the case with Royal Greens, short hitters have just as much of an advantage and with firm, hard fairways short hitters can hit it a mile.

So in making picks it’s best to look at past history and how players have done at Abu Dhabi and Dubai.  Also have to consider that this is an Asian Tour event and Joohyung Kim won the Singapore International two weeks ago and Sadom Kaewkanjana won the Singapore Open last week.  With COVID-19 being so bad in London, many writers are doing stories from home, so it’s hard to get any real news with nobody reporting from the course.  One thing to be aware of, Dustin Johnson, Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, Tony Finau, Patrick Reed, Jhonattan Vegas, Bubba Watson, Joaquin Niemann and Phil Mickelson made the trip from San Diego on Sunday to Saudi Arabia.  Even though they did it in a first-class manner, the 18 hour journey and the 12 hour time change has to be tough on them.  Now Johnson, Finau, Mickelson and Reed have played this event before, but for Schauffele and Watson this is their first time and since they will only get one practice round they are at a disadvantage.  One last thing about the week, the weather is going to be different each day, on Thursday will be dry and warm at 85 degrees, but Friday they are calling for partly cloudy skies with lots of wind.  Saturday and Sunday will be sunny and 87 but windy.  Now all four days will see winds in the 15 to 22 mph zone.