Padraig Harrington will warn his peers on the European Tour tonight against the dangers of protectionism at a time of economic uncertainty.

With the players’ committee meeting in Portugal to discuss a change in the rules to make its members commit to playing more events on mainland Europe from next year, the three-times major champion will argue that an outward rather than inward-looking approach is the key to the tour’s future success.

And he will do it against the backdrop of the almost certain resignation of Thomas Bjorn as the committee chairman — not, the Dane insists, because of Harrington’s opposition to the proposals, but because he needs more time to concentrate on playing.

The committee will meet after the first round of the Portugal Masters here and Harrington, the world No 7, has been invited, in his own words, to be “the dissenting voice”.

“If the European Tour is to be a viable alternative to the PGA Tour [in the United States], we have to embrace Asia,” Harrington said. “We have got $5 million events there in two weeks’ time [the Barclays Singapore Open, followed by the HSBC Champions tournament, in Shanghai] — and that’s where the tour has to look to grow.

“We have to see ourselves as a world tour. It would be narrow-minded to think that we should only be playing golf in Europe. Asia seems to be the growth area, so maybe those are the ones we [the leading players] should be encouraged to play.”

Bjorn was equally forthright. “We treat everyone on this tour as an equal,” he said. “But we also know that these decisions have a bigger impact on our top players and their schedules. Padraig’s input is important for the committee to hear. But we will also make the decision on what we think is right for the tour.”

Ballesteros aims for Open

Severiano Ballesteros, partially blind in his left eye after four operations to remove a brain tumour, said yesterday that he still hoped to have recovered sufficiently to play at the Open Championship next year. “It’s a long way before we can make any decisions,” he said. “But I would like to show up at St Andrews because it is a very special place.” It was there, in 1984, that Ballesteros won the second of his three Open titles.