Richard Bland decided to criticize the alliance between the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour. Speaking on the Bros and Birdies podcast, Bland believes that the DP World Tour has made a big mistake, considering that some top players will be heading to America.
“Personally, I think Keith has maybe missed an opportunity. I’ve spoken with DJ, I’ve spoken with Bryson, and because they knew the penalties that were coming their way from the PGA Tour and they resigned their memberships, DJ said to me, “look, if Keith doesn’t come down too heavy on you guys, I’ll join the DP World”.
I think Keith had an opportunity to get some top players in the world playing on DP World but Jay Monahan has a very, very strong hold on the world of golf right now, and probably on DP World, and it puts Keith in a very, very difficult position and he’s sided with Jay.”
– Bland said, as quoted by golfmonthly
Richard Bland on DP World Tour
Bland still can’t believe that DP World Tour decided on such a radical move. “I personally think this deal they’ve just done is awful.
How can you give your 10 best players to the PGA Tour every single year? I don’t get it. We’re being hammered with the world ranking points new system, we’re being hammered, you’re getting not even close to the amount you were playing for last year and then you’ve got to give your 10 best players to the PGA Tour which more than likely are gonna be our highest ranked players, so now you’re gonna get even less world ranking points.”
His main accent in all this is that only one side will profit. “If you have a young lad, if you had say one of the Hojgaard twins or something like that, if they were one of those 10 cards in the next year, and if they didn’t keep their card on the PGA Tour, which I fully expect them to do, but if they didn’t, they’d probably stay and play Korn Ferry.
So they probably wouldn’t come back to the DP World. They’d probably play Korn Ferry because they’d play for more world ranking points there and I can only see the PGA Tour are gonna invest more heavily there, so it’s such a sad thing to say, it would be detrimental to come back to the DP World”.
