Much has been made of this week's announcement of The Race to Dubai, which is the rebranded name for the Order of Merit. The timing of the announcement last Monday could not have been in starker contrast to what was going on elsewhere in the world. As the FTSE took its biggest one-day fall since October 1987 and $2500b was wiped off the value of world shares, the European Tour and Leisurecorp were giving details of their lucrative partnership, which will include a tournament with a $20m purse in Dubai next year.

Leisurecorp bought Turnberry, its golf courses and the hotel, for £55m earlier this year and are spending another £30m on refurbishing it. Leisurecorp is a subsidiary of Dubai World, which is thought to have assets of £50bn. It owns Pearl Valley golf estates in South Africa, Snowmass golf resort in Colorado as well as the Jumeirah Golof Estates in Dubai where the European Tour will have its Middle East headquarters and the Earth golf course, designed by Greg Norman, where the Dubai World Championship will take place from 19-22 November next year.

David Spencer, the larger than life Australian, who is the chief executive of Leisurecorp, said: "We will be giving $40m over the next five years [to the European Tour]. That is a good little treasure chest."

Significantly, however, 11 events of the 52 events on the 2009 European Tour do not yet have a venue.

Call me a cynic or a Doubting Thomas but on Tuesday night while sitting in my hotel room in Spain watching television reports of the day's mayhem in the world's financial markets, my eye was caught by one headline. "Middle East banks may be affected by the current turmoil."

"We're not getting into bed withy any rocky banks" George O'Grady, the chief executive of The European Tour, said. But who is to say this sweetheart deal, which has overshadowed what is happening on the PGA Tour in the US, will not itself fall foul of the current economic crisis?

What happens if the Middle East does get caught up in all this? Will the one area in the world that seems hellbent on expansion at present and has a war chest to end all war chests be able to withstand that?

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Madrid has submitted a bid to stage the 2018 Ryder Cup, according to Santiago Fisas, Spain's Cultural and Tourism minister. "The Ryder Cup is very important from the point of view of the economy and the repercussions it has," Fisas said. The Ryder Cup generated $196m for Ireland in 2006.

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You go to the Costa Brava for the sunshine and the Mediterranean Sea. What you might not have appreciated is that there is good golf in the area, too. The PGA Golf de Catalunya was built two decades ago with the express aim of being the venue for the 1997 Ryder Cup. That did not happen but ten events have been held there since and the 11th will start in a few weeks when the Final Qualifying school gets underway.

"Eleven years ago we were in the middle of nowhere," Agustin Garcia, the general manager of the resort, said as he hurtled around the complex in a buggy talking almost as fast as he was driving. "Now we are in the middle of everywhere. We are 80km from Barcelona, 10 from Girona, 15 minutes from the coast and there is skiing within an hour. We are the best kept secret of the Costa Brava - and we don't want to be."