ATLANTA, GEORGIA | It almost seemed as if the ground moved under golf’s feet at East Lake Golf Club this week, a potential seismic shift as the tectonic plates of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf collided in an eruption of proposals that could alter golf’s future landscape in major ways.
This could be a very good thing for golfers and golf fans. If the PGA Tour plays these cards right, it could create a more compelling product that will make sponsors, television partners and viewers very happy. Getting the best players together more often – 17 weeks a season! – will be a huge leap forward for the game.
Or it could be a huge disappointment if done the wrong way. And by “the wrong way,” I mean if done to create a trough of limited-field, no-cut events that excludes too many promising young players and offers a patina of 72-hole versions of “LIV Lite” instead of more compelling competitions with depth and consequences. That the tour and the top players who suggested these changes seem to be leaning this direction down the road is concerning.
As Jon Rahm said regarding LIV’s formula before the U.S. Open this year, “to be honest, part of the format is not really appealing to me. Shotgun three days to me is not a golf tournament, no cut. It's that simple. I want to play against the best in the world in a format that's been going on for hundreds of years. That's what I want to see.”
That’s what we all want to see. The already enhanced events at Riviera, Bay Hill and Muirfield Village provide the kind of drama and promise that the proposals Jay Monahan outlined on Wednesday could deliver more often. Each of them has reduced fields of 120 players – 24 to 36 fewer players than regular tour events, depending on daylight hours available. But having to make a cut maintains the competitive spirit of what golf is all about.
If the tour decides to start reducing fields of established invitationals such as the Arnold Palmer and Memorial, it will diminish the history of what made those events so special in the first place beyond their revered hosts.
The $20 million purses – which will pay $3.6 million to winners, nearly $1 million for fourth place and more than $500,000 for top-10 finishers – will offer plenty of money to the best players over the course of 12 enhanced events per season (plus majors). Why deny others the opportunity to break through and cash in just to “guarantee” paychecks to the game’s established elite?
The oft-repeated refrain “play better” should apply to everyone, not just those trying to break through the glass ceiling but those already sitting in the penthouse. That’s not too much to ask to help maintain the meritocracy on which the tour always has been based and its leaders keep extolling as superior to LIV’s up-front contract and no-cut system.
If the tour decides to start reducing fields of established invitationals such as the Arnold Palmer and Memorial, it will diminish the history of what made those events so special in the first place beyond their revered hosts. And creating a series of no-cut events would just be stealing from the LIV playbook while also diminishing their value under the new Official World Golf Ranking system that rewards depth and penalizes short fields.
That’s a mistake the tour has made before. Converting the long-standing tour event at Doral into a no-cut World Golf Championship event in 2007 destroyed the vibe of one of the most popular fan experiences. The crowds and the energy shrank along with the inventory, and the resulting product lasted only another decade before the tour abandoned the Blue Monster without a sponsor.
Here’s a modest blueprint – with suggested choices for the four new 2022-23 enhanced events that have yet to be determined and are likely to be shifted around to different events in different seasons – of what a truly “enhanced” future can look like that would make this shift the best model it can be:
Zozo Championship: Already a reduced-field, no-cut event with 78 starters last year in Japan. Making it an enhanced event and possibly finding a place for it in the future calendar schedule – perhaps even letting Hideki Matsuyama assume the role as host – is the kind of thing that could reward Japan’s most valuable star for reportedly spurning LIV Golf's lucrative offers.
Sentry Tournament of Champions: The addition of Tour Championship qualifiers, announced last week, already has improved what was always too shallow of a field (especially when a handful of prominent players often skipped Kapalua). With a likely field of 40-50 players, this marks the right kind of exclusive start when the calendar season returns in 2024.
Farmers Insurance Open: The semi-official launching point of the full-field domestic season is played over two courses at Torrey Pines. Maybe this is the right footprint to present perhaps the lone domestic full-field enhanced event, but please reduce it no further than invitational size.
Genesis Invitational: We got a glimpse of how good it can be with every top-10 player in the field at Riviera this year. Tiger Woods took over as host of the 120-player invitational that has been a fixture in Los Angeles since 1926. Please don’t mess with a good thing that represents the history and legacy they’re talking about safeguarding.
Arnold Palmer Invitational: See Genesis above. Don’t mess with the legacy of the man who created the tour, built Bay Hill and already thwarted Greg Norman’s ego enterprise once before.
WGC Match Play: It’s the best 64 “eligible” players in the world. The bracket defines it, and it’s the only quality individual match-play event left for the pros. No changes necessary.
Wells Fargo Championship: The Charlotte event at major-caliber Quail Hollow is already well regarded by the game’s top players, and it fits into the perfect May window on the schedule already to accommodate enhanced stature. It dates only to 2003, and its contract runs just two more years. This might be the spot for another annual no-cut event if it can entice a long-term sponsorship commitment. Assemble the world’s eligible top-50 players, the Player Impact 20, recent tour-eligible major winners and anyone in the top 30 of the FedEx standings through the RBC Heritage and you can have a quality 60- to 75-player field.
The Memorial: Like the Genesis and API, the invitational model at Jack’s place doesn’t need breaking. However, of all the current invitationals, it has the shortest history and a living legend host who built it from the ground up. If Nicklaus wants to make the call to reduce it to a 78-man, no-cut event in the future, that’s certainly his prerogative.
Genesis Scottish Open: The PGA Tour owes its DP World Tour partners something in all of this, and this co-sanctioned event is the perfect spot on the calendar leading into the Open Championship. Take the best 75 players each from the PGA and DP World tours and let ’em play for the biggest purse in Europe.
FedEx Cup playoffs: The tour already has laid out its plans for a trimmed-down, three-event postseason that goes from 70 to 50 to 30 players. No need to alter that gameplan.
How good would a schedule like that be mixed in with the Players, Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and British? When the calendar schedule returns in 2024, that would gather the world’s best to compete against one another in 17 of the 34 weeks of the PGA Tour season, from January through August.
It’s the kind of itinerary that will generate new legends following in the footsteps of those who came before on trophies that matter most.
Let’s hope the PGA Tour doesn’t overthink it – and over shrink it – and rolls this out the right way.
Top: Tour fans and Jon Rahm want to see "the best in the world in a format that's been going on for ... years."
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