The Revival of the European Tour

The PGA Tour is the only major tour that discourages appearance fees. "Any proper administrator would like it to be a level playing field in monetary terms every week, but we can't have our heads in the sand," O'Grady says. "We have to admit it goes on, and it has gone on since the beginning of professional golf. But at the moment it doesn't appear to be an issue around the world and no organizers are complaining to me personally."

The lure of guaranteed money has become an incentive for American stars to travel outside the U.S. Phil Mickelson reportedly received $1 million to play the HSBC Champions in China in 2007. Woods, who travels as much as any top U.S. golfer, earns $3 million-plus per tournament.

What pleases O'Grady most is how Woods and Mickelson had to battle to win in Dubai and China -- that the world's two top players came into "his" house and had to fight for their trophies. And it all dates to that meeting at La Costa. "We had to look at ourselves, where we were strong and where we were not," O'Grady said. "It was not so much what we decided that was important. It's that we were all there trying to solve it together."

The Royal Treatment

Sheikh Mohammad has promised $100 million to the European Tour. Photo: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images

Like most successful developers, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum uses golf as a vehicle to sell real estate. Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Sergio Garcia are the marquee names Mohammad has brought to Dubai as golf course designers and to play his Dubai Desert Classic. Televised around the world, the tournament helped market Mohammad's 21st century Babylon, a desolate desert turned into a sparkling metropolis.

A case could be made for the sheikh, the Ruler of Duabi and the vice president of the United Arab Emirates, as being the most vital player in modern-day European Tour history, the word "player" loosely describing the wealth he has distributed, or invested, in this once dysfunctional and underfinanced circuit. Using oil money as fuel, chief executive George O'Grady and his associates from European Tour headquarters in England tapped into Mohammad's vast resources -- his family has a reported net worth of $16 billion -- to provide the same type of funding PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem receives from corporate giants such as FedEx.

Mohammad already was ingrained in European Tour culture before last year's announcement of the Dubai World Championship and the Race to Dubai points pool, but now he becomes more of a partner by committing £100 million over the next five years (with a five-year, £150 million option to renew) into O'Grady's version of the FedEx Cup.

Once the details were worked out -- including the building of a golf-learning center and international headquarters for the European Tour at Jumeirah Golf Estates -- the tour had its cash cow locked up for a decade. As O'Grady said, this is more than just the sponsorship of a tournament.

"Unless I am 100 percent sure about an idea, I will not implement it," Sheikh Mohammed once said. "Once I am convinced, I do not hesitate."

Golf is just one sport the sheikh is using to promote his land. Mohammad owns the Godolphin stables, the world's largest collection of thoroughbred racehorses, in hopes of one day winning the Kentucky Derby. The Dubai World Cup is Mohammad's baby, with prize money going up from $4 million in 1996 to $21.25 million in 2008, with a commitment to build a $1.3 billion race track called Dubai Maydan by 2010.

Born in 1949, and raised in the United Arab Emirates and schooled at Cambridge University, Mohammad was a sportsman growing up. Tennis, motorsports, cricket and soccer facilities are also among his marketing tools. Manchester United, one of Great Britain's most famous soccer teams, was paid $50 million to establish an academy in Dubai. By comparison, Woods' design fee of a reported $25 million is a bargain.

As the Sheikh has said, "We are here to create, to invent and to promote Dubai." What Mohammad didn't add is that price is no object.