Agreed! It would be great to have a widely-publicized open access Starters event.
The notion of everyone playing one tournament with the same conditions and equipment is very appealing, and I'm certain would give a huge boost to entry-level players to see themselves alongside TLs and Ls, and encourage them to persist with the game.
The programming ability to have restricted equipment events has been in place for over a year now, but apparently there's a problem with putting them into the main Game Client Tournament list (I was told it's that the required clubs list is so long it somehow limits the # of participants... very strange and frustrating!).
Anyway, we are running every month this year a Starters event parallel to the main Virtual Tour. It's part of the Tough-It-Out concept: with uneven lies as well (just to add to the fun!), and 2 x single-rounds. All tiers are playing alongside each other. Sadly, we can only promote it through the forums for now (but we are hopeful that WGT might create a pop-up ad, or a News Item to help spread the word).
Check it out this month's event thread here and follow the Tourney link.