Sir Nick Faldo says golf needs to adopt F1 approach to capitalise on merger with PIF

Sir Nick Faldo, who the British Masters in 1989, played in Wednesday's Pro-Am at The Belfry

Tournaments such as this week's British Masters can benefit from the controversial merger involving golf's established tours and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, says Sir Nick Faldo.

The Englishman, who won six majors, believes golf needs to adopt a similar outlook to Formula 1 to fully capitalise on the deal.

He also thinks that the breakaway LIV Tour, fronted by his great rival Greg Norman, will fade from relevance.

Faldo is event host for the next five years for the Belfry tournament, which tees off on Thursday with only eight of the world's top 100 players competing.

World number 31 Justin Rose is the leading player in the DP World Tour tournament. But Faldo predicts a bright future for the competition at a venue which staged the Ryder Cup on four occasions.

"It's a long term plan," the winner of three Opens and three Masters titles told BBC Sport. "I'm using this year for assessing. The course [which opened in 1977] may be due for some refreshing because the game, as we all know, has moved on a lot."

Faldo, who won the British Masters in 1989, acknowledges that the strength of field is a far cry from past glories. Past winners include fellow former world number ones; Norman, Seve Ballesteros, Ian Woosnam, Bernhard Langer, Lee Westwood and Rose.

"Obviously everybody wants the best field they can get and we'll have to see what we can do with that in the future if you elevate the event," Faldo added.

"We have the higher powers on both sides of the Atlantic, I believe the goal is now they have a partnership to really bolster up professional golf.

"If it's literally supported by global golf, it's not like your going off and playing on a different tour, you're actually going off to play a great tournament supported by the world of golf. That's kind of what it feels to me.

"I would hope that the best players do venture out and go around the world a bit like I did, Seve, Pricey (Nick Price), obviously even Greg back in the day. We toured all four quarters of the world."

For golf's new age to succeed, Faldo believes the game needs to look at the way other sports promote themselves. "The bottom line is to make golf a real global sport with great coverage," he said.

"Formula 1 is huge, isn't it? They've got great coverage. I bet you I could name more F1 drivers than I could golfers because they do such a good job in making them personalities and you know the teams and all that sort of thing.

"I did say this moons ago, take a leaf out of F1 and what they do and what the drivers have to do.

"I was part of it back in the day, but isn't it farcical that golfers say you can't talk to me before I play golf, don't disturb me. And then an F1 driver has to talk before they put a helmet on and they could kill themselves at the third corner.

"It's a slightly different mindset isn't it? Golfers need to click into the mode a bit quicker and do more so you do really get to know the faces and the characters."

Men's professional golf has been reflected in the Netflix series Full Swing, but it was the streaming service's cycling version that was more eye catching to Faldo. "I just watched the Tour de France on Netflix," the 65-year-old said.

"My goodness, guys crashing and throwing up and beyond exhaustion. It was pretty compelling. And what did we see? We saw Justin Thomas go down to CVS to get some cough drops.

"I mean come on, seriously," he laughed.

Faldo admits he is as much in the dark as anyone regarding how the surprise merger between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and PIF, which was announced on 6 June, will pan out. "I don't know," he said. "Nobody knows.

"I think they needed this partnership because the legal bills were going to be colossal. I mean, they might have been talking a couple of hundred million for the legal bills between two sides."

The LIV tour continues this week at Valderrama on the Costa Del Sol. Faldo insists he would have had no interest in going to the 48-man, shotgun start 54-hole series.

"I don't exactly think that's Faldo golf," he smiled, before revealing he has no issues with the players who departed to the new circuit.

"They went and they left. That was their decision to go, fine. I have no problems with that.

"For me, you don't know what's going on. You can't see their scores on TV, it's very minimal coverage so I personally thought it was going to fade out anyway in another year or so."

But there can be no denying the hyper inflation LIV and their $25m tournaments have brought to the men's game.

"The money is crazy compared to our era," Faldo observed.

"You can waltz around and hit a golf ball for four days and walk away with half a million and upwards for a nice finish. It's slightly different than my day; considerably in fact. We were excited to get 1500 quid to finish third in Madrid."