Global Golf Post - July 20, 2012

Something in the Water

BY LEWINE MAIR

In the build-up to the 2012 Evian Masters, the magic in the air is on a par with that in the town’s legendary spring water. The tournament is celebrating 18 glorious years as it metamorphoses into something still more glamorous – a little like the butterflies on this summer’s poster.

As from 2013, The Evian Championship, to give it its new title, will be the first major, men’s or women’s, to be held in Continental Europe.

In this final year of the original, flutters of “major” tension will almost certainly kick in as competitors mount the new back tee at the first. This adjustment, like the stretching of the second, has featured in the initial stages of the course upgrade. The ninth and the 14th also are holes whose “major” guise is complete.

Of course, it is not just the play-

ers who are so keenly conscious of what lies ahead. Spectators will be that much more anxious to stay in the know, board-carriers will be bearing their boards that much more proudly, and the media will be upping their games as they prepare to switch to a “major” key. As Franck Riboud, the tournament president, has said of the transition, “It gives us greater legitimacy but, more importantly, it gives us so much desire and enthusiasm.”

The sponsors’ love of the women’s game has been instrumental in making the Evian Masters what it is.

Initially, Riboud’s father sponsored a music festival in the town. Riboud Snr. decided to switch to golf 20 years ago and started out with a men’s pro-am. When the men did not, as it were, come up to scratch, he swapped them for the women – and has stayed with them since.

“We prefer the women,” came Riboud’s cheerful explanation at the press conference at which the news for 2013 was announced.

Where the sponsors are thrice blessed is in having a venue like Evian which mirrors St Andrews in the way the town and the course are one. You see the same people on the streets as on the fairways, and the moment the tournament gets underway, you can guarantee that the locals will forget all about the prices in the shops. They will be more interested by far in how many yards Laura Davies is hitting the ball, the length of Michelle Wie’s skirt – and who is where in relation to par.