Nationwide vs. European Tour?
There was an interesting article at The Golf Channel that talked about the possibility of the Nationwide Tour having better golfers than the European Tour. With all due respect to our Nationwide players, they’re a distant third behind the European players. It’s really not even close and I’m not sure what the point of the article is, except to create fodder for the Europeans to use as motivation this week.
For those not aware, the Nationwide Tour is the minor-leagues of the PGA Tour and it’s full of guys (young and middle-aged) trying to make it to the big show (a.k.a. the PGA Tour). In 2005, Jason Gore earned his PGA Tour card by winning three times on the Nationwide tour and became the media darling last year, so there’s no doubting that th Nationwide Tour produces some excellent golfers.
But to compare the Nationwide Tour as a whole to the European Tour is ludicrous. Pick the top 10 players from the Nationwide and the top 10 from the European tour and the boys from the Nationwide tour would get spanked, over and over again. The European Tour has made incredible strides over the last 20 years and continues to produce some of the world’s top players, not to mention the Euros owning the Ryder Cup as of late.
If the article was intended to stir up the Euros this week, then the author did a great job.