Jay Townsend - May 1, 2012

• By Morning Drive Team
• May 1, 2012 7:20 AM ET

European Tour Analyst Jay Townsend is in Seville, Spain this week for the Open de Espana. It is a typical week in Spain this week in the sense that Seve is not far from anyone’s mind. Everyone feels his presence at this event and he is often discussed among the players and other people at the tournament. It is also the 40th anniversary of this event being the start of the modern European Tour and it would be exciting if a Spaniard won this week.

The European Tour has grown a great deal over the years as the European Tour typically did not begin its season until after The Masters for a long time. When he was competing on the European Tour back in the 1980’s, things were very different in the sense that the schedule did not start until after The Masters and it was largely a continental tour instead of the worldwide tour that we see today.

Bernd Weisberger won the Ballantine’s Championship on the European Tour and he has been in contention recently as he lost a European Tour event in a playoff in 2011. He has played some good golf recently but he said on Sunday that he played the best three days of golf of his life to earn a five stroke win.

Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood are just two of a number of notable European players in the field in the Wells Fargo Championship and he feels very bullish about both although he gives an advantage to McIlroy because he won at Quail Hollow in 2010. Westwood won an event in Indonesia two weeks ago but did not defend last week in South Korea. Many Europeans are using this event to ramp up their U.S. schedules for the 2012 season.