Lamented one middle-tier tournament director, who feels as though the firing spitwads against Justice's billion-dollar battleship: "We don't have the resources to throw another $1 million into the budget to buy players. It just doesn't fit our tournament model ... It's not a fair fight."
It's all the latest rage, really. In essence, select tournaments have become evermore clever and resourceful in finding ways to attract top players while skirting, albeit barely, the appearance-fee regulations. For the sake of propriety, let's call them inducements. Two of the tour's deep-pocketed sponsors, Zurich and Royal Bank of Canada, over the past 2-3 years launched what have become known as ambassador programs, wherein a handful of notable players have been signed to endorsement deals.
Forking over a hundred grand apiece to select players isn't against the rules, as long as the lone requirement in the contract agreement isn't to merely show up and play. That would connote an appearance fee, and as most fans know, they are verboten in the States, although not on other global tours.
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