European Golf Team Championships - All You Need To Know

The action takes place at Gleneagles in July where men and women compete for equal prize money, broadcast on the BBC

European Golf Team Championships - All You Need To Know

The European Tour and the Ladies European Tour have agreed the format and qualification process for this year's European Golf Team Championships at Gleneagles.

The event takes place from 8-12th July 2018 and sees men and women competing for equal prize money.

It will be broadcast on the BBC, becoming the only UK golf tournament broadcast live on terrestrial TV this year.

Related: Thomas Bjorn and Catriona Matthew to team up at GolfSixes

It is part of the Inaugural European Championships where golf is one of six sports including athletics, aquatics, cycling, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon.

The athletics events are taking place in Berlin, whilst everything else is hosted in Glasgow.

There will be three golf events - Men's Matchplay, Women's Matchplay and an 18-hole foursomes Mixed Team Championship.

Players will represent their countries with 16 teams of two players competing in the Men’s and Women’s Team events before combining to form teams of four in the Mixed Team Championship.

Related: Sky vs BBC - Who covered The Open better?

The qualification process is taken from the men's Official World Golf Ranking and women's Rolex Rankings, from 10th July 2017 to 9th July 2018.

There will be 64 players competing - 32 men and 32 women - and one nation can have a maximum of six golfers.

The tournaments will take place over Gleneagles' PGA Centenary Course, host of the 2014 Ryder Cup and 2019 Solheim Cup.

Tickets cost £10 for practice days and £15 for tournament days.

Related: The UK&I's best golf holes - Golf Monthly's Dream 18

European Tour Chief Executive Keith Pelley said, “There is a need for golf to embrace new formats and engage a wider audience, and following our recent announcement about the inclusion of female players in the revolutionary GolfSixes tournament, the European Championships presents yet another innovative opportunity to break new ground on a number of fronts.

"The opportunity to represent your country is a great honour that many players experience at amateur level, but the opportunities are fewer when they become professional. Add to this the match play element, and of course the intriguing prospect of the mixed team event, it all points to being a fantastic event for spectators at Gleneagles and those watching on free-to-air television across Europe.”

The action will be broadcast on terrestrial TV across Europe, with a potential to reach over 1 billion people.

European Golf Team Championship - Who will play?

For those of you who may be getting excited about Europe's best male and female golfers competing together, this will come as bad news...

The tournament takes place in the same week as the men's USPGA Championship where almost all of the world's top 100 players usually tee it up.

This means that European powerhouses like Jon Rahm, Justin Rose, Rory McIlroy, Henrik Stenson and Sergio Garcia will not be competing.

It also means that leading Austrian Bernd Wiesberger, Belgian Thomas Pieters, Dutchman Joost Luiten and German Martin Kaymer also probably won't tee it up.

There is good news on the women's side of things though, as there is no LET tournament that week.

That should mean that European number one Anna Nordqvist will play, as well as the likes of Charley Hull, Georgia Hall, Carlota Ciganda and Suzann Pettersen.

Make sure you follow Golf Monthly on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram