The Russian Open

Filed in archive Golf News on August 5, 2007

The Russian Open

While the big boys teed it up at Firestone on Sunday for the final round of the latest WGC event, the precursor to next week's final major of the year, the European Tour was paying a visit to Le Meridien Moscow Country Club for the second European PGA Tour edition of The Russian Open.

The Russian Open is held on the only 18 hole championship layout in the country (and there's a lot of country to Russia), putting the Russians well behind the Chinese in embracing golf and going crazy with course construction.

Le Meridien is a Robert Trent Jones Jr. layout built in 1993. The purse for the tournament is 2 million dollars US, according to the website.

Per Ulrik Johannson was the winner finishing at 23 under par. So Le Meridien is not too much of a challenge as a championship layout.

The website is an intriguing one. The English version was obviously written by a Russian whose English is not so great.

"There, the golf course is green; its grass is cut and freshly prepared for this year's tournament", says the site.

And you will find, in the press section, a bus schedule for hustling members of the golfing press back and forth from the resort course to hotels in Moscow! I guess no one drives to the event in Moscow; they take the bus.

That gives The Russian Open a wonderfully proletariat feel to it. But this is quickly countered by the fact that the pro-am is "where world's power brokers, politicians, royalty, industrial magnates, tycoons, media moguls, investors, bankers and businessmen all come together to challenge each others strengths and play with the pro's" - all spelling is from the website - so the organizers clearly regard golf as something not for the proletariat at all but for the elite.

Indeed, "if you can not be there, be a part of the most respected event of the elite, in Russia." Yes, English is not the main strength of the webmaster, for sure, but that's fine.

The point is that golf has its hooks in the Russian psyche, now, at least the wealthy part of the Russian psyche.

But that's where much of Russia's "cultural modernization" is coming from - the wealth derived from the country's vast oil and gas deposits which, somehow, found its way into the hands of a very small group of billionaires.

Those billionaires are now buying football clubs in the UK, formula one teams, hockey leagues in Russia, etc.

And, it seems, they're buying professional golf, too.

At some point in the near future, enough Russian "resource" money will come together to create the world's richest golf tournament ever.

And that will really buy professional golf. Of course it will only be available to the "elite".