It's good to see the European Tour returning closer to its roots and where better than Ireland to kick off the home season.

With Rory McIlroy, Darren Clarke and Paul McGinley all enjoying high profile on their home island, good new sponsors in mobile phone company 3 and a traditional old course, The 3 Irish Open promises to be a great week. Richard Finch, of course, is defending champion after winning the Irish Open in such unforgettable style at Adare Manor last year.

It's a very exciting time coming up for all our players and not least Lee Westwood who has acquired the services of Darren Clarke's long-time bag man Billy Foster for the next phase of his career.   I have a strong feeling that Billy could well prove to be the missing piece of Lee's jigsaw.

Whilst talking about Billy, I have to mention that he's doing a sponsored walk from Loch Lomond to The Open Championship at Turnberry carrying a Tour Bag on his back between 9th and 13th July 2009 and all the monies donated from this will go to The Darren Clarke Foundation and be shared out between Breast Cancer charities and the Candlelighters Children's Cancer Trust. If you want to help Billy's fundraising efforts please Click Here to go to his Just Giving page.

Another interesting new career taking off is that of Australian Scott Arnold, who will celebrate his first tournament as world No.1 in the Irish Open, ironically his last tournament as an amateur.

Scott's a very exciting addition to our stable of young players... and the fact that he's a good friend of Ricky Ponting will definitely increase our interest in the cricket this summer.

Our three representatives at last week's Players Championship in Sawgrass, Florida, didn't quite find the performances to match the weather, but nobody was a match for Henrik Stenson whose fantastic last round made him the second European in succession to win the prestigious trophy.