HEXHAM, ENGLAND | During an interview with Cho Minn Thant at the Asian Tour’s recent International Series England tournament at Slaley Hall, the circuit’s CEO apologised for his ringing phone. Did I mind if he took a call from Kiradech Aphibarnrat? Cho chuckled at the end of it. “Kiradech told me that he’ll be playing in the LIV event next week, and he just wanted to know if it was all right for him to come back and play on the Asian Tour if he got banned by the U.S. and DP World tours,” Cho said. His response? “You don’t have to ask.”
The official was pondering whether the Americans and the Europeans would want to ban their players. In the case of the DP World Tour, Lee Westwood, Sergio García, Ian Poulter and Graeme McDowell all would have been lined up as possible Ryder Cup captains. Westwood was on the brink of being chosen for the ’23 instalment before Henrik Stenson got the nod; Poulter, more than anyone, knows how to win a Ryder Cup; and McDowell is a team man if ever there were one. Who will ever forget the man-to-man support he gave at all times to Victor Dubuisson in the match of ’14 at Gleneagles?
Away from Ryder Cup issues, Cho senses that the old order is changing. In his eyes, the PGA Tour will stay as the No. 1 circuit, with the Asian Tour, thanks to the injection of Saudi money – $300 million over 10 years – moving into second place above the DP World Tour. “Our players,” he said, “are beginning to think twice about going to Europe when they can make a good living at home and go straight from playing in Asia to playing in the U.S. More and more, they’re proving that their golf is up to it.”
“The DP World Tour had not objected that sponsorship money was coming from the Saudis when they were running the show, but suddenly it became all about human-rights issues. I don’t like to get involved in politics, but haven’t all the tours visited countries with doubtful records on the human-rights front?”
Cho Minn Thant
He cited Australia’s Cameron Smith, recent winner of the Players Championship, as someone for whom honing his game on the Asian Tour had been enough. He mentioned Thailand’s 15-year-old Ratchanon Chantananuwat, known as T.K. (his parents’ initials), who already has won on the Asian Tour. An “A”-grade student, T.K. plans to carry on mixing Asian Tour events with schoolwork before heading for college in the States and thence perhaps to the PGA Tour.
To explain, the 10-strong International Series, the second of which was the Slaley Hall-hosted event in England last week, is the equivalent of what was not so long ago a thriving Rolex Series on the European (now DP World) Tour. Meanwhile, it is possible for players to leap from the International Series to the LIV Golf Invitational Series, from which a total of five players from Slaley Hall would be heading for the Centurion Club this week. (Not that they could be sure of more than the one outing in that environment.)
“I don’t think that my players are looking too far ahead at the moment,” Cho said. “They are just happy to be back playing a full schedule and making a living instead of doing what they had to do during the pandemic. Some of them went back to doing a bit of teaching, others to driving Ubers.”
Cho talks sadly of the divide which occurred between the DP World Tour and the Asian Tour over the Saudi International tournament. Initially the Saudis linked with the DP World Tour, but when the Saudis wanted the event to become a co-sanctioned affair with the Asian Tour, the Europeans declined. They left the event to the Asians and joined forces with the PGA Tour.
“The DP World Tour had not objected that sponsorship money was coming from the Saudis when they were running the show, but suddenly it became all about human-rights issues. I don’t like to get involved in politics, but haven’t all the tours visited countries with doubtful records on the human-rights front?
“What’s lacking today is conversation,” Cho said. “The PGA (Tour), the DP World Tour aren’t talking to the LIV people, and then you have the R&A who stopped giving a place in the Open to the No. 1 on our Order of Merit. I would have liked the R&A to have been above all of this, especially when I have always seen them as a neutral body.” Cho noted that Martin Slumbers, the R&A’s chief executive, and Keith Pelley, the CEO of the DP World Tour, are on the board of the LET, and its Aramco Series is Saudi-sponsored.
Cho’s job goes no further than his role with the Asian Tour, which he loves. His players are thrilled at how their lives have taken a turn for the better, and thrilled, too, with the atmosphere they enjoy on their home circuit. “When they come back from the States and Europe, they tell me how the players over there all have their own individual teams and tend to stick with them. In Asia – and here at Slaley Hall this week – you’ll see all the different nationalities sitting at tables together and enjoying each other’s company.”
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