Retief Goosen
Courtesy: Getty Images

The world's two major golf tours are in another arm-wrestling match this week.

At Muirfield, Ohio, Jack Nicklaus hosts the much-favored and highly regarded Memorial tournament.

Across the Atlantic, in Wales, the Celtic Manor Wales Open gets underway.

In a post yesterday, I wrote that the European Tour's CEO, George O'Grady, was intent on creating a super tour from the European, Japanese, Asian and Australian tours in a bid to keep many of Europe's top players "at home" more often.

This week is a good example of why he's doing that.

Despite the fact that the Celtic Manor Wales Open has become one of the pre-eminent championship events on the European Tour, right up there with last week's PGA Championship at Wentworth, the Smurfit European Open and others, there is only one European golfer in the world's top ten who will be teeing it up in the land of Tom Jones.

Two-time US Open winner Retief Goosen has chosen to play in Wales for the first time but he's the biggest name in terms of world ranking at number 9. Michael Campbell, past US Open winner and the irascible Colin Montgomerie are also present.

Sweden's Robert Karlsson, a PGA winner this season, is defending his title at the Celtic Manor so he has rightly passed up the Memorial.

But over at Muirfield, it's a different story. Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey, Luke Donald and Ian Poulter often seen playing in Europe, have opted to stay Stateside this week.

Other Euros like Jesper Parnevik and Carl Pettersson have likewise placed their bets at the Memorial.

Ernie Els and Vijay Singh are there, too.

If the Celtic Manor Wales Open is becoming a pre-eminent stop on the European Tour, why is there but one top ranked European in the field?

George O'Grady has a tough row to hoe if he wants to offer inducements to keep Euro golfers away from the PGA Tour.

Players play tournaments as much because they enjoy the organization as the prize money.

The Celtic Manor, home of the Ryder Cup in 2010, is a tough and challenging layout and the prize money on offer is very good.

But if a player of Goosen's stature has passed on the Memorial in order to make a debut at the Wales Open, perhaps he's received a large appearance fee to do so as the European Tour hopes to boost the profile for the tournament.

I don't know. What is likely is that George O'Grady will have the overseas phone lines burning as he puts a push on to bring his super-tour vision to fruition a little faster.