European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley laid out ambitious plans with hopes of becoming a "viable alternative" to the PGA Tour.
That starts with an increase in prize money, and he went so far as to say that it would make more sense for the European Tour's flagship event to be the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai ($8 million purse) instead of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth ($5 million purse) because of the money.
Another measure of the mountain he has to climb is the world ranking.
The gap continues to widen in the average ranking points for PGA Tour events compared with Europe — up an average of one point this year, two points from 2012.