While golf continues to grapple with trying to reunify the game, the Players Championship begins its next half century with the 51st edition of the PGA Tour’s flagship event this week at TPC Sawgrass. With the tournament on tap in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, Global Golf Post’s Ron Green Jr., John Hopkins, Scott Michaux and John Steinbreder gathered for a virtual roundtable to discuss the issues facing the PGA Tour.
A few weeks ago, tour commissioner Jay Monahan and Tiger Woods made a “unification” deal between the tour and LIV Golf sound imminent. A week later they mentioned “initiating a discussion” and now admit it’s not imminent. How troubling is the lingering process and what is the best solution?
Green: It has been 21 months since the framework agreement shook the golf world and, at least from the outside looking in, nothing has changed substantially beyond the PGA Tour taking on a private equity investor. A one-tour solution would be ideal but it could mean LIV Golf surrendering, which seems unlikely. What if the Saudis dumped LIV, Aramco became the title sponsor of the tour’s signature series and the PIF got a seat on the tour board? Let those LIV players who still have tour eligibility come back when their contracts expire. The others have to play their way back.
Hopkins: Not troubling at all. A significant step forward seemed to be made by Donald Trump’s intervention. It is taking time to work through but because Trump has business connections with Saudi Arabia a deal will be done. It’s no longer if but when.
Michaux: LIV refuses to just go away completely, so the only solution is to work with it to set less conflicting schedules and create limited cross access. Allow regular PGA Tour events to offer a maximum of four spots and signature events two spots for LIV invites. Allow one conflicting release a year during FedEx Cup season for tour players to form a guest team at each LIV event and allow the best two performing guest teams to compete in the LIV Team Championship.
Steinbreder: The way things currently stand, you have to wonder whether any deal is ever going to get done, especially if the Saudis are insisting on team play and 54-hole tournaments being a part any settlement. But at this point, maybe it does not really matter, for the game seems to have found some sort of happy place.
Five Players champions since 2007 are ineligible to compete as LIV members. Five additional top 100 players on LIV are also not eligible. For a tournament that always boasted being the strongest field in golf, is it diminished without them?
Green: Once any tournament begins, it becomes more about who is there and contending than it does about who isn’t there. The Players has become a standalone brand in professional golf, creating its own pedestal in tournament golf’s pantheon. Actions have consequences and those who left the tour sacrificed this week. It hurt them more than it hurt the event.
Hopkins: The tournament no longer craves being described as the fifth major – thank goodness. Without some of the world’s best, it clearly isn’t worth discussing its status until all the best players in the world are eligible … and not necessarily then.
Michaux: Simple fix. Welcome back past champs within a 20-year window of winning and invite all OWGR top-100 players regardless of tour. Offer LIV five spots to its five highest individual players on the season-ending points list not otherwise qualified and anyone on the current season points list in the top three at deadline. Let Players be about the players again.
Steinbreder: I think the Players should do what the USGA and R&A do for their Opens – and what Augusta does for the Masters to some extent – by finding ways to ensure that past champions and top-ranked players are able to compete, no matter what tour they are on. That way, the Players can present the best possible field.
PGA Tour Studios is officially open at the tour’s Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, headquarters. What can it do to help elevate professional golf’s broadcast profile?
Green: The tour and its partners have heard the complaints about tournament telecasts and they’re paying attention. The focus on the Friday cutline has been a good improvement and last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational the decision to limit commercial breaks in favor of highlighting player-caddie conversations came straight from the Fan Forward survey asking about such things. The more inside viewers can get, the better.
Hopkins: More quality journalism. What Netflix’s “Full Swing” series demonstrates is how compelling golfers can be away from the golf course. Hitting the ball is one thing. Watching Ludvig Åberg struggling to make a cup of coffee is another. Personalise the players more. Ask them good questions.
Michaux: More golf shots, more shot tracer by more players. Fewer full commercial breaks, developing a “playing through” component that devotes a larger share of screen to the live action while offering sponsors more logo time atop screen graphics instead of commercials. Also, hire the geniuses who develop all the European tour social media content and do more of that.
Steinbreder: As somnolent as they can be at times, tour broadcasts are the least of golf’s problems. The key to improving all golf coverage is speeding up play and finding ways to ensure that the best players in the game are competing against each other as much as possible. And for God’s sake, stop talking about money!
The PGA Tour has promised to start seriously addressing the problem of slow play. What should it do to enforce pace-of-play rules?
Green: Publish the average stroke time rankings for every player on tour to validate who are the fastest and the slowest players. Shame can be a strong motivator. And start adding strokes to the slowpokes’ scorecard. Eventually, the message will sink in. No one is asking for three-hour rounds. It’s the rounds over five hours that need to stop.
Hopkins: Stroke penalties are the only way. Money penalties don’t work.
Michaux: Implement a 40-second shot clock as the Euro tour did in the 2018 Shot Clock Masters. Invest money in enriching the fan experience and not just the players and staff. The only way to change player behavior is to recalibrate and retrain their rhythm. If players can’t be ready and handle the stress of reacting more reflexively and instinctively in occasionally less-than-perfect conditions, then they aren’t the athletes they think they are.
Steinbreder: Levy meaningful penalties on the slowpokes, even if that affects the very best players. And make it about losing strokes and not money. These guys are so wealthy that financial fines have no real impact, but forfeiting a couple of strokes can make the difference between a win and a runner-up finish.
The first player to ever successfully defend his Players title, Scottie Scheffler, is going for a three-peat. Who will win the 2025 Players Championship?
Green: Russell Henley, the best player almost no one talks about.
Hopkins: Do we really need to ask this? Scheffler of course.
Michaux: Until proven wrong, there is no reason to believe Scheffler’s remarkable consistency won’t have him in position to win at Sawgrass again. Forced to bet against his inevitability, I’d side wager on Ludvig Åberg.
Steinbreder: I am going with Ludvig Åberg. His game is so strong, and he seems so poised and confident out there. You need to be both at the viper’s den that Pete and Alice Dye created at TPC Sawgrass. As for a dark horse, I like Daniel Berger now that he is all healed up and eligible.