Baddeley aims for US tour

If he wants to, Aaron Baddeley can call the European Tour his home for the rest of 2001. More likely, the lure of the United States - with tournaments bulging with minimum purses of $4 million - will win out as the 19-year-old Australian uses his friendship with Greg Norman to seek sponsor's invitations on the US Tour.

"I've got to sit down and see what is the best thing to do," remarked Baddeley in the aftermath of his play-off win over Sergio Garcia in the Greg Norman International in Sydney, a co-sanctioned European Tour/Australasian Tour event. Just before the tournament, Baddeley had forked out the £2,000 affiliate membership fee to the European Tour. The win means he can base himself in Europe for the rest of the season and also gives him a tour card until the end of 2003.

Yet, it's an indication of the growing battle that the European Tour now has in keeping its members from fleeing to the US in pursuit of greater riches that, even with a guaranteed card to play in Europe, Baddeley's first inclination is to pursue the option of looking for sponsor's invites to play in America. His preference is to keep his European card as a fallback option.

Baddeley, only the fifth teenager to win a European Tour event and the first since Garcia won the Murphy's Irish Open in 1999, has his eyes firmly set on carving out a career on the US Tour - despite having his European card. "I still want to focus on the US Tour. It's what I've wanted to do since I was 12," he said. Indeed, he has already secured an invitation to play in the Honda Classic next month.

Apart from giving him a tour card (in Europe), Baddeley's win in Sydney - his second in just six tournaments since turning professional - moved him to the top of the Australasian Tour's order of merit. If he finishes first or second, which seems likely as the Australian season winds to a close, he will earn an invitation to the British Open at Lytham; a top-place finish would also earn him a spot in this year's US Open. So, with that in mind, he has decided to stay on in Australia for this week's Masters at Huntingdale, where one of his challengers will be Garcia, and will then play one more tournament at home before heading to the States.

After winning the 1999 Australian Open as an amateur, Baddeley played eight tournaments in the US but only made the cut in one. If Baddeley doesn't get US exemption for 2002 by making enough prize money from his sponsor's invitations, then, he said, he may well play some European Tour events towards the end of the year. But such a stance shows that times have changed.

Even though the European Tour now has more prize money on offer than at any time in its history, the tour where such players as Greg Norman and Vijay Singh cut their teeth before making the move to the US circuit doesn't appear sufficiently attractive to entice Baddeley. He wants to jump straight in with the big fish in America, which is most definitely Europe's loss.

Meanwhile, Padraig Harrington will play his first tournament in almost two months when he competes in the Carlsberg Malaysian Open, starting on Thursday. Ronan Rafferty, who missed the cut in his two tournament outings in Australia in the past two weeks, is the only other Irish player in a field which includes US Masters champion Singh.

By a quirk of the mechanism which determines the world rankings, Harrington's absence from competitive golf - he hasn't played since losing his first round match to Steve Stricker in the world matchplay in Melbourne on January 3rd - has not hampered him and he remains in 23rd place in the latest list released yesterday.

Darren Clarke is ninth, and Paul McGinley, who needs to break into the top-50 after the Dubai Desert Classic in early March to secure a place in the US Masters field, is ranked 70th.

Richie Coughlan's failure to survive the cut in last weekend's Buick tournament has seen him drop 14 places to 145th in the US Tour moneylist. The 26year-old Birr golfer has failed to get entry into this week's Bob Hope Classic which is limited to 128 players. As eighth alternate, he is unlikely to get a late call-up.