Honest Assessments Of The Race To Dubai Forthcoming? **

The UK writers have feasted on Lee Westwood and Rory McIlroy's rejection of the PGA Tour and eagerly await Martin Kaymer's decision as another nail in the American tour's demise.

Now, will we get some realistic assessments of the European Tour's teetering Road Race To Dubai as the boys arrive in the desert for their season-ending championship? Three years ago and fresh off a free jet ride, a few scribes fawned over the prospects for the Road to overtake the FedExCup and even lure Tiger to join the European Tour. And now stocked with most of the big names in golf the event should be at its zenith with years of prosperity in the cards, yet merely surviving the end of its five-year contract will be an impressive feat.

We'll be watching scribblers!

Update on Sunday, November 21, 2010 at 08:33 PM by Geoff

**The SI/golf.com Confidential gang touched on the state of the event and competing tours in this week's edition.

Comments

[Loopin For The Lama]

The Race to Dubai is certainly more interesting than the FedEx Cup. Maybe because the golfers are better (at the top, anyway) or maybe because it isn't shoved down our throats by the Golf Channel.

[Amen Coroner]

Ole ole ole. Who cares bout this West vs More West stuff anyways. All us Yanks care about is good golf watching on any continent and some less robotic spoiled Tour stiffs!

[carnaptious and camsteerie]

Ugh!

[Brian Keogh]

The Road to Dubai? Was that the one starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour?

[FW Kuehne]

I love the Race to Dubai format and particularly how it is presented to the golfing community. The PGA channels are somewhat biased and boring in its style. The current performance here in Asia of so many great players was simply phantastic. Should PGA lower the commitment to play 15 times in the US? I think so because it would be good for all concerned.

[Geoff]

Road, race...so picky Keough!

[LCL]

Sometimes the USA needs a wake up call, we get too complacent with our world standing in everything we contribute to the world. Maybe the new generation of players will step it up both in emotion and performance for the game. The only thing I hope they don't adopt is the 'billboard' array of logos all over the attire that the Europeans have displayed, I find it tasteless and obnoxious-especially for the game of golf.
Westwood is the worst, is he broke?

[Brian Keogh]

Geoff,

Re the Race/Road to Dubai, not much has changed at the venue for the DWC since Dubai's economy hit the skids 12 months ago.

I was at the course today. Like the rest of Dubai, it's still a building site with a temporary clubhouse and unfinished villas all over the place. At least we can see 6 of the world's top 10 this week. Plus Poulter, Harrington, Oosthuizen, Els, Noh, Manassero et al. Europe is the place to be right now if you want to win a chunk of world ranking points.

As for the R2D, who knows what the future holds. It's a year now since we learned that Dubai World owes $100 billion plus. They've recently restructured $25 billion of that debt so they might turn the corner. As a citizen of Ireland, I feel their pain.

PS: I'm not that picky, otherwise I'd have corrected your consistent misspelling my surname a long time ago :) The Keoughs must be the California branch of the clan. The family motto is pretty apt right now - Resistite usque ad sanguinem.

Enjoy the coverage from Dubai. It should be an entertaining week.

[yardbird]

Lazy, Geoff. You could quite easily hotlink to a piece about US journos fawning about the FedEx millions when they were originally announced. Plenty of UK/Euro journos have been sceptical and critical about the RtD and DWC since, the unfinished venue, the shells of buildings, the stagnant pond etc, including Messrs Corrigan and Lawrenson.