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Last week at the SBS Tournament of Champions new PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan gave his first press conference. He said that the tour executive were looking at rescheduling some events.

In particular he talked about the FedEx Cup Playoff series being brought forward so there is no television clash with the start of the NFL season in America. He also said they would be looking at the possibility of reducing the playoffs to three events rather than four. Also to perhaps finish the Tour Championship on Saturday with a 36 hole FedEx Cup play off on the Sunday. Interesting times.

He said that there may be the possibility of moving round The Players and even the PGA Championship and looking at a return of a tournament to Miami, such as the old Doral event. He said every decision would be made collaboratively with all the stakeholders involved with the tour.

Monahan appears to be a different character from his predecessor Tim Finchem. Apparently he caused a stir by wearing jeans to his first players meeting. FInchem was known for making deals behind closed doors.  Monahan has been approaching players to talk, working the room. He also has been looking at the NBA’s incredible social media output and talks of aggressively testing new ideas and trying things out.  Sounds like he and European Tour Chief Executive Keith Pelley are of similar minds.

Here we go again. Members of Muirfield Golf Club will be voting again this month on the issue of admitting womwn members. In the meantime this park bench was placed in Princes Street in Edinburgh giving the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers a taste of their own medicine.

Rory McIlroy has committed to return to the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth Club in May now that it is the first event of the tour’s new Rolex Series which guarantees prize funds of at least $7 million.

Early bird tickets – with season tickets for the whole week at £75 – are available until January 20 on eventbrite.co.uk, afterwards at full price.

The Rolex Series also comprises the Irish Open, Scottish Open, Italian Open, the Turkish Airlines Open, Sun City and the DP World Tour Championship. Tour Chief Executive Keith Pelley calls it ” the most significant advance in European Tour history”.

Sir Nick Faldo came to play in the South African Open this week and his enthusiasm and involvement all week gave the tournament a boost and he worked very hard both on the golf course and in the commentary booth. He was excited to announce that his Faldo Junior Series, which is now in its twentieth year, is to expand even further. He and Ernie Els have agreed to join their junior foundations to form a new global junior tournament which will take place January 8-9 2018 at The Els Club Copperleaf. Boys and girls will take part in teams headed up by major champions, competing with other elite international amateurs. Provisionally named the Friendship Cup it will allow youngsters to oexperience new cultures and friendships.

The Faldo Junior Series now reaches a new continent. 40 Faldo Junior Series tournaments take place across 30 countries in Europe, United States, Asia, Australia and South America. I remember going to one of the very first at the London Club when the tour began in the UK 20 years ago and now it is a truly global phenomenon. What a legacy to give to the growth of the game.

So singer Robbie Williams has been taking some flak after he was caught out on Instagram applying sanitising gel after shaking hands with his fans.

Robbie is a keen golfer and a few years ago I caught him tucking into sausage on brown at the halfway hut at Sunningdale. He glanced up and said “don’t take me photo, its me day off”. (Hello. Did I have a camera?)

This “gel gate” reminded me of one of those things which one professional golfer said which got picked up by television. In the early days of Tiger Woods career he was paired with a contemporary who instructed his caddie at the end of the round when they all shook hands with Woods

“Be sure and wash your hands now”.

Wouldn’t give the thumbs up to a unclassy comment like that.

He’s still grinning, despite having had two painful hernia operations in the off season. And why not… A new study by the London School of Marketing says that Phil Mickelson is now the third most marketable sportsman in the world, behind Roger Federer and LeBron James.

Apparently, thanks to deals with Callaway, Rolex, Exxon. KPMG, Amgen and Barclays Mickelson earned £41 million off the course last season, without a win. Fourth on the list was Tiger Woods who earned £37 million, despite only teeing up once. Rory McIlroy was 6th on the list and Jordan Spieth joint 8th.

In Forbes List of all time highest paid athletes golfers make up a quarter of the top 20.

Woods, the late Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus have all accumulated fortunes of over a billion dollars.

Mickelson at $760 million and Greg Norman at $680 million are also in the top twenty, ahead of Andy Murray, Serena Williams, Gareth Bale, David Beckham, Usain Bolt, Ronaldi, Neymar, Kobe Bryant, Ronaldi and Lionel Messi.

So with all this lucre, why does Phil keep on trying to lose it all on his bets, makes no sense at all.

Spot the famous golf courses. Picture taken from the International Space Station.

While the appointment of new European Ryder Cup Captain Thomas Bjorn has been widely welcomed, spare a thought for those players who don’t get the nod to be captain.

In the past week Miguel Angel Jiminez has spoken to the Spanish media about the reason he was given for his non-selection to be captain for the 2016 team.

Jiminez, who was vice captain in 1997 and 2014, was told by European tour bosses that “he had to perfect his English if he was to be selected as captain”. Jiminez blasted “that excuse was a little bit banana republic – with all due respect to bananas which are very tasty. We have interpreters on tour for a reason, not that I have ever needed one.” He said that he had been quite unhappy about this and had exchanged words with Ryder Cup Director Richard Hills and former European Tour Chief Executive George O’Grady.

Now the Ryder Cup is at last returning to continental Europe to embrace the wider contribution of the European countries to the tour, surely the players should be allowed to use their own languages if they wish, it is to the European team’s advantage. Seve and Olazabal conversed in Spanish when they played their matches together, a natural thing to do. It is not gamesmanship as Paul Azinger said it was, to conceal their thoughts and tactics in their own language, it was just them speaking naturally to each other. This is the Ryder Cup, do the teams always meet each other half way? In 18 months will the Americans put up a French speaking captain for the matches in France? Very unlikely indeed.

The European Tour is a huge melting pot of languages and cultures, let it be represented as it really is, without insisting that it be watered down to make it more palatable and understandable for the Americans. It’s to the Europeans great advantage to be the way it is.