Bjorn gave fair warning

So Thomas Bjorn is to resign as Chairman of the European Tour's Tournament Committee. Ostensibly, this is because he wants to concentrate on playing the game instead of just trying to run it. 

After slithering from 42nd to 210th in the world rankings since he took the chairmanship just over two years ago, Bjorn wants to take on Padraig Harrington as a golfer again.

As he said two years ago: "I would not let any other job affect my play. If it did, I would stand down immediately. I'm not old in golfing terms and there is still so much I want to achieve."

Harrington is popular with his peers and Bjorn is as close a friend as any. Yet they have differing views on what the European Tour should be.

The Dane has heard enough griping from sponsors over the past two seasons to know that if the Harringtons of the world don't play more of Europe's core events, there will be no European Tour. We might as well just call it the Asian Tour and be done with it.

Harrington has a world view and reckons that the best way to attract the best players in the world to play the European Tour is to make it easy for them to become members. He also thinks the tour's future lies in Asia, rather than the Old Country.

Who is right? 

Bjorn has a tendency to fly off the handle but beneath the gruff exterior lurks a pure pragmatist. Just a week before he accepted the role of chairman of the Tournament Committee, he summed up the current pickle quite brilliantly in Scotland on Sunday on 30 September 2007. 

"I always compare the PGA Tour with Tiger," he muses. "The second you realise he is what he is, that's the time you can start competing with him. If you run around thinking you can beat this guy, he's going to keep knocking you down. And it's the same with the PGA Tour. If the European Tour thinks it can be as big and powerful as they are, then it isn't ever going to happen. But if we accept that they are there and that they do what they do, then we can start managing our own affairs to the best of our ability." 

Tiger Woods is never going to become a member of the European Tour. So what is the problem. It's all about getting stars like Harrington, Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia to turn up a bit more often for events like the BMW PGA, the Irish Open and the French Open. How bad would that be?