Great response to new tour

Irish promoter Dara O'Neill has hit the ground running in his first foray into staging a professional golf tournament in Europe. Indeed, the response to the new Euro Pro Tour's first event - at Dale Hill Hotel and Golf Club in East Sussex on October 13th-15th - has been so great that the organisers anticipate having to stage a qualifier on the eve of the tournament.

Due to the amount of daylight at that time of year, the tournament has a limited field of 132 (compared to a standard 165 on the European Tour). The demand for places in the event has exceeded all expectations. "Quite simply, we're sold out - even at this advance stage," said O'Neill, who believes that the demand for places demonstrates the need for quality tournaments for aspiring touring professionals.

O'Neill founded a similar development tour for professionals in the United States before bringing the concept over to Europe, and he claimed it took four or five years for the American tour to get to a stage where a qualifying round was required.

The professionals competing in the tour's inaugural tournament will be playing for a top prize of £10,000 (€15,000) from an overall purse of £40,000. Located an hour's drive from London and accessible to the M25, Dale Hill was designed by Ian Woosnam and measures 6,512 yards.

The two-day, 36-hole tournament will be proceeded by a pro-am to benefit Co-Operation Ireland, a cross-Border, non-political, non-profit organisation which has is its joint patrons President McAleese and Britain's Queen Elizabeth.