KAPALUA, Hawaii — On the rolling hills of a former pineapple plantation in West Maui and amid an array of the state’s signature rainbows, 39 PGA Tour pros will begin a chase for a pot of gold at Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course.
With the flip of the calendar, the PGA Tour is set to debut the first of 10 designated tournaments with lucrative purses – $15 million this week or nearly double the prize money of a year ago – aimed at attracting the top players to compete against one another more often. This week’s Sentry Tournament of Champions has attracted 17 of the top 20 in the world, though World No. 1 Rory McIlroy opted to skip it. The WM Phoenix Open and the Genesis Invitational hosted by Tiger Woods in Los Angeles mean three of the first seven tournaments on the West Coast Swing have been elevated in status by the Tour this year.
“I’m excited to see how they are received throughout the year,” said Tour veteran Adam Scott. “Change needs to happen. If you don’t change, you get run over. The world is moving forward. I’m excited for something different.”
If all goes according to plan, the Tour elite will compete against each other at least 17 times per year. The idea of the best players competing against each other more frequently was a player-driven concept aimed to prevent more top talent from jumping ship for the upstart LIV Golf, which will expand to a 14-event circuit next month. Patrick Cantlay, for one, contends that LIV Golf has helped improve the professional golf landscape by forcing the Tour to adapt.
“I think that it’s been interesting how much it’s changed golf, as in, like, everyone’s trying to innovate and make golf better all of a sudden,” he said. “I think that will be a massive benefit for the viewer because I think now more than ever competition is making people evolve and making people grow and think outside the box.
“So I think it’s been really good and will be good for professional golf in the long run. But it’s been such a polarizing issue that it’s made people, you know, feel emotional about something that has been the same for such a long time.”
Some claim the Tour’s designated events aren’t all that different than what the Tour did previously in the 1990s to combat Greg Norman, LIV Golf CEO and Commissioner, and his previous effort for a breakaway circuit. Will Zalatoris, who is a member of the Tour’s Player Advisory Council, noted it won’t change his schedule…
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