Five New Pro Golf Tournament Ideas

Whether you’re a fan of the new circuit or not, one thing LIV Golf has shown this year is that there’s scope for other ideas within the professional game. The established format of 72 holes stroke play with a 36-hole cut is an excellent way to determine the best player and it will likely always be the way the four Majors are decided, although don’t forget that until 1958 the PGA Championship was match play and there are other formats out there…

In cricket, different formats of the game now comfortably co-exist with specialists in each. Golf too has specialists, those more suited to grinding out a stroke play victory, others to the sprint of a one-round match play battle. There have already been some innovative new formats introduced in recent years – GolfSixes, the European Team Championship and the Scandinavian Mixed spring to mind. What else could golf do to showcase different player skills and give spectators an alternative view of the sport? … Here are some ideas.

Take the lead from The Amateur

The Amateur Championship has a format that requires skills both in compiling a score and winning one-on-one contests. It starts with 288 players – The leading 288 available on the World Amateur Golf Ranking – Wouldn’t it be great to see a starting field of that size with the top 288 available from the Official World Golf Ranking? It would be two rounds of stroke play, over two separate courses on consecutive days, before the top-64 go on to battle it out in match play over one of those two courses…. Events have done something similar before (the Belgian Knockout for instance) but never on that sort of scale… It would be immense.

International Mixed Foursomes