Imagine you are George O’Grady, the head of the European Tour, a body created to stage golf tournaments predominantly in Europe but which has expanded to take in 50 events around the world, offering its 800 members competitive golf most weeks of the year, from China in November, to South Africa in December, Dubai in February and Moscow in August.

And yet still the best players choose to play for a rival in the United States. No wonder you may be tempted to announce, as O’Grady did at a soggy Wentworth yesterday, that you were joining forces with the world’s other tours to take on the US in a world tour.

When the European Tour was founded in 1971, Tony Jacklin was its leading light. Since then, Severiano Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam and José MarÍa Olazábal have given Europe success in 18 major championships, while the Ryder Cup, once dominated by the US, has become a thrilling event that Europe have won five of the past six times.

Yet across the Atlantic, a juggernaut has been gathering speed. The PGA Tour has become a powerful organisation, thanks in no small part to the emergence of Tiger Woods, who has helped to generate huge television revenues for it.

The average weekly purse of its 44 annual tournaments is $6 million (about £3 million).

Recently, the PGA Tour announced the FedEx Cup, a points system throughout the year that culminates in a four-event series for the leading players with a first prize of $10 million. This has not been the only reason why players from around the world are attracted to that country, but it is one. The purses are huge, the most world ranking points are on offer and they feel that they can improve more quickly by regularly competing alongside their peers.

A result of this, however, has been a weakening of other tours around the world. The Australasian tour is on its knees. The South African tour does not have a domestic economy strong enough to support it so that it cannot afford prize-money that would attract the world’s best, with the notable exception of the Nedbank Golf Challenge. The Asian or Japanese tours do not generally produce many good players who go to the US.

In Ireland recently, Padraig Harrington, the world No 11, suggested that those bodies outside the US might unite and form a world tour to face up to the PGA Tour. O’Grady supported him yesterday.

“There is a powerful force coming from the PGA Tour in the US,” O’Grady said. “The movement of The Players Championship to May [from March] has made it quite tough and we have had to react to the golfing wishes of the rest of the world. The Australian, South African, Asian and Japan tours are coming together. The idea of amalgamating with other tours to put on a really attractive schedule by whatever name we call it is one that we are refining now.”

O’Grady would not name this new body. “Certainly it won’t be a World Tour,” he said. “That’s far too grand for me to come up with. What I can say at the moment is that we are the European Tour and we are working with all our partners to make a hugely strong alternative to the PGA Tour in the US.”

The PGA Tour is far and away the biggest, most powerful, richest and most successful in the world. Some of its success, however, comes from the variety of players competing. There are 18 Americans in the leading 50 players in the world. The remaining 32 are two Canadians, two Spaniards, a Scot, an Irishman, a South Korean, a Fijian and a Japanese, as well as four Swedes, six each from South Africa and England and seven Australians.

The detail needs working out, but what is wrong with the five other tours around the world getting together to make their existence a little stronger? And if it were to be named a World Tour, which effectively excluded the US, would that be any more of an anomaly than baseball’s World Series in the US, which features only North American teams?

Weakest links

— The Japan Golf Tour is strong within its own country but produces few male players who go on to compete internationally. Shingo Katayama, who is No 48 in the world, is the only Japanese in the top 50 and there are only five more in the next 100.

— The Asian PGA Tour includes countries such as Thailand, South Korea and India and Jeev Milkha Singh, who has won two events on the European Tour, as well as two events in Japan, and topped the Asian order of merit, is the best example of a graduate from that tour.

— The PGA Tour of Australasia has been boosted by the success of Australian players such as Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy, both of whom are in the world’s top ten. Many of the Australians, however, owe their success more to the institutes of sport in Australia than to the PGA Tour of their country.

— Ernie Els and Retief Goosen are the leading graduates of the Sunshine Tour, the body that runs professional golf in South Africa. Both competed in Europe on their way to the United States and both are members of the European Tour as well as the PGA Tour in the US. So is Trevor Immelman, their countryman, ranked No 14. Charl Schwartzel, who is No 43, soon will be.