Colsaerts: Tour switch because of courses, not cash

• By Ryan Lavner
• Nov 19, 2012 2:14 PM ET

Capitalizing on his good form in limited action and increased profile in the States after the Ryder Cup, Nicolas Colsaerts has accepted PGA Tour membership for the 2013 season. Though the potential Tour lucre was attractive, the Belgian Bomber maintains that the main catalyst for the switch was an entirely different reason.

“The thing that attracts me the most is the courses,” he said, according to a story Monday in The Guardian. “I think they probably fit my game a little better week in, week out than the ones we play in Europe.”

Colsaerts, currently 11^th on the European Tour’s Order of Merit as he prepares for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, has played across the pond full-time for the past seven years. As he told The Guardian, “I feel like now is a good time for me to go and try something new.”

In nine PGA Tour starts this season, Colsaerts, 30, had a pair of top-10 finishes and earned $677,011 – enough to secure a card as a non-member. (Also of note: He averaged 315.2 yards per drive, second best on Tour.) The world’s 35^th-ranked player also was one of the major revelations at the Ryder Cup, stealing the spotlight from Tiger Woods in the Friday afternoon fourballs on his way to a stirring victory in the team format.

Right now, it appears as though Colsaerts will play a PGA Tour-heavy schedule to begin the season, head to Europe for a few big summer events such as the BMW PGA and Volvo Match Play, return to the States for the FedEx Cup playoffs and then cap his year with Europe’s big-money closing stretch.

“It means that I have been going in the right direction,” Colsaerts said of his impending move, according to the report. “Playing on the PGA Tour is a big step in a golfer’s career. As soon as I heard I had the possibility of playing over there, it was something I wanted to do. … I’m going to try and make the most of it now.”