Dunhill issue sponsorship warning

JOHANN RUPERT, chief of the South African company Dunhill, one of the European Tour’s chief sponsors for many years, laid it on the line for players and officials at the annual Tour dinner on Tuesday night.

He reminded them emphatically that these are tough times globally and that the support his company and several others have been providing might quickly dry up unless things quickly improved.

European number one Lee Westwood listened attentively to Rupert’s words and empathised completely. “Sponsors have a lot of options, to go or not to go or just hang on to their money,” he acknowledged. “We are very fortunate to have loyal supporters this week like BMW and others like Barclays, HSBC, Omega and Dunhill themselves who do multiple tournaments and have been doing golf for a long time.

“These companies are in some of the hardest hit areas of business and I think we would have to have a very sheltered view as a tour and as professional golfers to think that they were going to be around forever and always want to stick money into golf and use our tournaments and the European Tour as a vehicle for promotion.

“It would be daft to just keep presuming that. As a tour and as golfers, I think we do have to do more and give them much more value for money, especially with the way things are at the moment.”

Honest, plain talking from a player of Westwood’s eminence is extremely welcome. The reality is that the European season has been more than a little dull and uninteresting so far with even a few blank weeks and others with a decidedly small prize fund by modern standards.

However, all the big names are back for the BMW sponsorship this week with a purse of €4.5 million with €750,000 and a bundle of world ranking points for the winner.

Westwood goes into the event as one of the favourites along with Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, his ‘stable mate’ at Chubby Chandlers’s International Sports Management, and quietly proud of having this week moved to third in the world rankings behind Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

A win this week would narrow the gap still further on the leaders and even if Westwood has never particularly liked the Wentworth lay-out or played there, the possibilities are still very apparent.

“Tiger’s performances and schedule are unpredictable at the moment and while Phil has already won a major this season, his performances are very much up and down,” Westwood said. “The world rankings are about consistency so I suppose numbers two and one are more achievable than they have been in the last few years.”

Another big week at Wentworth and that will be the case more than ever.