![\"Ernie](\"\/b\/imgs\/pga\/ernie_els.jpg\")
Incoming European Tour front man George O’Grady has described the pressure being put on Ernie Els to play more events in the US as “extraordinary.” Els was clearly angered two weeks ago when he told reporters that the PGA Tour had sent him a letter demanding more appearances if he wished to retain his PGA Tour membership.<\/p>\n
“It seems like quite an extraordinary pressure to put on a player of his level who plays usually 17 or 18 tournaments in the United States anyway,” said O’Grady. “He’s always prepared to listen if we need him to play somewhere, but he’s a very hard man to tell to do something. You do ask him, usually politely, and sometimes he says yes.”
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\n“There’s a world outside America and I’m part of it. They can’t restrict me from playing where I want to play,” said Els. “You can’t start telling me ‘hey, come over here and leave the rest of the world.’ It’s not going to happen that way.”<\/p>\n
The issue affects other world-ranked players as well, including the US Open (and South African native) Retief Goosen and Australian Adam Scott. “We debated it initially at the Players Championship,” added O’Grady. “We have seen it coming. Retief Goosen has been suffering under the same stricture. We are not happy on it.”<\/p>\n
Els could take his ball and play elsewhere – on the European Tour exclusively – but doing so would severely decrease his income both from winning and sponsorships. Said O’Grady: “We’ve always done as much as we possibly can to make Ernie Els feel welcome at all times.”<\/p>\n
The PGA Tour rules stipulate that players tee it up in at least 15 events to maintain their membership. They’re allowed three conflicting overseas “passes,” and each additional pass comes at the cost of playing another PGA Tour event. Of course, the commissioner (currently Tim Finchem) can grant extra passes at his discretion. Els has played 15 PGA Tour events this year along with 15 overseas events.<\/p>\n
“They can’t restrict me from playing where I want to play. They want over 20 and nothing abroad,” said Els. “It means if you want to go play in Dubai, I’ve got to ask them for a release. And for that release, I need to give them one extra tournament. Well, I don’t want to go that far,” he said. “It’s been on my mind all year and after this letter we’ll sit down and talk because they sent quite a strong letter to me.”<\/p>\n
It will be interesting to see who wins this match of wills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ernie Els – no longer a member of the PGA Tour? It could happen if Finchem and his cronies don’t back off a little.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pga"],"yoast_head":"\n