which a minimum number of tour appearances are required to qualify for the tour ’ s final order of merit , this is intended to ensure that players who should have qualified automatically and form players can be included .
It is in this area , even in golf , that the dangers become very apparent when you step out of a purely merit system , as has been proved on a number of occasions when individual team selections by captains on both sides of the Atlantic have been vilified .
Even one of the game ’ s four majors , the Masters , which is an invitational tournament , exercises its right to invite only in terms of all past winners and the amateurs who are included in the field each year . It is said that the involvement of the amateurs is in acknowledgement to the tournament ’ s founder , Bobby Jones .